Empire Capital Holdings signs $15.6M loan with Thorofare Capital for Williamsburg hotel

Empire Capital Holdings signed a $15.6 million loan with lender Thorofare Capital for the McCarren Hotel & Pool at 156 North 12th Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

The deal closed on February 25, 2022 and was recorded on March 17, 2022.

This adds another $600,000 of debt and replaces a previous $15 million from Hakimian Capital. Co-founder Daniel Nadri signed for Hakimian Capital on the mortgage assignment.

Abraham Khalili was the signatory for Empire Capital Holdings through the entity 147-149 McCarren LLC. Robert J. Cooper signed for Thorofare Capital through Thorofare Asset Based Lending Reit Fund V, LLC.

The property has 25,059 square feet of built space and 1,980 square feet of additional air rights for a total buildable of 27,000 square feet according to PincusCo analysis of city data. The loan price per built square foot is $622 and the price per buildable square foot is $577 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.)

Empire Capital Holdings bought the property on October 21, 2016, for $20.2 million.

The property

The 156 North 12th Street parcel has frontage of 75 feet and is 120 feet deep with a total lot size of 9,000 square feet. The zoning is M1-2/R6A which allows for up to 2 times floor area ratio (FAR) for manufacturing and up to 3 times FAR for residential with inclusionary housing. The city-designated market value for the property in 2022 is $12.8 million. The most recent loan totaled $15 million and was provided by Hakimian Partners on July 22, 2021.

Violations and lawsuits

The property was involved in one lawsuit and zero bankruptcies over the past two years. The suit was a $2.5 million money judgment concerning unpaid rents filed on February 22, 2021, against MIJ Hotels. In addition, according to city public data, the property has received one DOB violation and $16,000 in OATH penalties in the last year.

Development

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 Williamsburg, the bulk, or 35 percent of the 65.1 million square feet of built space are residential elevator buildings, with residential walkup buildings next occupying 19 percent of the space. In sales, Williamsburg has the 9th highest sale turnover among other neighborhoods in the city with $1.4 billion in sales volume in the last two years. For development, Williamsburg is the 6th most active neighborhood among other neighborhoods. It had 5.1 million square feet of commercial and multi-family construction under development in the last two years, which represents 8 percent of the neighborhood’s built space.

The block

On this tax block, PincusCo has identified the owners of nine of the 78 commercial properties representing 127,517 square feet of the 276,307 square feet. The largest owner is Empire Capital Holdings, followed by Atlas Feather and then Icon Realty Management. There are no active new building construction projects on this tax block.

The majority, or 38 percent of the 157,267 square feet of built space are residential elevator buildings, with residential walkup buildings next occupying 30 percent of the space.

Surrounding

Within a 400-foot radius of 156 North 12th Street, PincusCo identified seven commercial real estate items of interests occurred over the past 24 months.
Of those seven items, two were for major renovation including a certificate of occupancy change. They were one permit applications with a total initial cost of $397,000 and one permit with a total initial cost of $1.5 million. The most recent of these two items was the filing on July 6, 2021 for a 38,649-square-foot R-2 building with 18 residential units at 119 North 11th Street.
One of those seven items was a sale which Alexander Meroni bought the 6,735-square-foot, seven-unit mixed-use building (S5) on 116 Bedford Avenue for $6 million from Brooklyn Standard Properties on January 18, 2022.
Of those seven items, four were loans above $5 million totaling $37.4 million. The most recent of the four was Atlas Feather which borrowed $20 million from Investors Bank secured by the 59,333-square-foot, 40-unit rental (D6) on 150 North 12th Street on November 24, 2021.

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