Donald Hearn pays $11.6M to James Hodges for industrial in Ridgewood

Donald Hearn through the entity 1618 Decatur LLC paid $11.6 million to James Hodges through the entity JHS Acquisition LLC for industrial building (F5) at 1614 Decatur Street in Ridgewood, Queens.
The deal closed on January 4, 2023 and was recorded on January 12, 2023. The property has 17,000 square feet of built space and 17,000 square feet of additional air rights for a total buildable of 34,000 square feet according to PincusCo analysis of city data. The sale price per built square foot is $682 and the price per buildable square foot is $341 per the PincusCo analysis. (The price per square foot analysis is the transaction price divided by square feet as reported in public records and assumes no air rights have been sold.)
The seller bought the property on March 4, 2014, for $2.8 million. The signatory for James Hodges was James Hodges. The signatory for Donald Hearn was Ronda D. Lucas. Donald Hearn is the CEO of the buyer entity. Ronda D. Lucas is an attorney.

Prior sales and revenue

Prior to this transaction, PincusCo has no record that the buyer Donald Hearn had purchased any other properties and has no record it sold any properties over the past 24 months.
The seller James Hodges had not purchased any other properties and had not sold any properties over the same time period. The 17,000-square-foot property generated revenue of $375,357 or $22 per square foot, according to the most recent income and expense figures.

The property

The 1614 Decatur Street parcel has frontage of 81 feet and is 180 feet deep with a total lot size of 17,000 square feet. The lot is irregular. The zoning is M1-4D which allows for up to 2 times floor area ratio (FAR) for manufacturing The city-designated market value for the property in 2022 is $1.8 million.

Violations and lawsuits

There were no lawsuits or bankruptcies filed against the property since September of 2020. In addition, according to city public data, the property has not received any significant violations in the last year.

Development

For the tax lot building, it received its initial certificate of occupancy on January 14, 2019. There are no active new building construction projects or major alteration projects with initial costs more than $5 million on this tax lot.

The neighborhood

In Ridgewood, the bulk, or 38 percent of the 20 million square feet of commercial built space are walkup buildings, with mixed-use buildings next occupying 29 percent of the space. In sales, Ridgewood has had very little sales volume relative to other neighborhoods with $270.7 million in sales volume in the last two years. For development, Ridgewood has had very little major development activity relative to other neighborhoods.It had 475,259 square feet of commercial and multi-family construction under development in the last two years, which represents 2 percent of the neighborhood’s built space.

The block

On this tax block, PincusCo has identified the owners of two of the 22 commercial properties representing 6,950 square feet of the 110,627 square feet. The identified owner is Dexter Adolphus.
There are no active new building construction projects on this tax block.

The majority, or 87 percent of the 110,627 square feet of built space are industrial buildings, with mixed-use buildings next occupying 13 percent of the space.

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