EMS Capital pays $19.5M to Crown Acquisitions for retail leasehold in SoHo

Edmond M. Safra’s EMS Capital through the entity Avrs Broome LLC paid $19.5 million to the Chera family’s Crown Acquisitions through the entity Crown NY Retail Acquisitions LLC for the retail leasehold covering store space in the loft building at 453 Broome Street in SoHo, Manhattan. The expected use is cash flowing.
The current tenant is retailer Zadig & Volaire.
Crown Acquisitions had a loan with an original principal of $19.25 million from March 2017, and that loan was paid off at the time of this sale.
The deal closed on August 29, 2024 and was recorded on September 10, 2024. The retail has 4,800 square feet of space according news reports. The sale price per square foot is $4,062 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 signatory for Crown Acquisitions was Haim Chera. The signatory for EMS Capital was Edmond M. Safra. The fee owners of the building are Daniel Millner and Ari Millner.
The building was acquired by Achitob Millner, the father of the late real estate investor Giel Millner.

Crown Acquisitions signed a 49-year ground lease in 2014, as the New York Post reported at the time. Then in 2017 Crown borrowed $19.25 million from United Overseas Bank. Three years later, in April 2020 as the pandemic began to take hold, Crown signed an an option for an extension to the ground lease, bringing the total lease to 99 years, ending in September 2119. That lease extension was valued at $17 million.

Prior sales and revenue

Prior to this transaction, PincusCo has records that the buyer EMS Capital purchased one property in one transaction for a total of $9.1 million and has no record it sold any properties over the past 24 months.
The seller Crown Acquisitions purchased four properties in four transactions for a total of $14.1 million and sold two properties in two transactions for a total of $48.3 million over the same time period.

The property

The retail building in SoHo has 32,604 square feet of built space according to a PincusCo analysis of city data. The parcel has frontage of 50 feet and is 95 feet deep with a total lot size of 4,787 square feet. The lot is irregular. The zoning is M1-5/R7X which allows for up to 5 times floor area ratio (FAR) for manufacturing and up to 5 times FAR for residential with inclusionary housing. The property is in the SoHo-Cast Iron Historic District. The city-designated market value for the property in 2022 is $18.2 million.

Violations and lawsuits

There were no lawsuits or bankruptcies filed against the property for the past 24 months. In addition, according to city public data, the property has received $50 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 $1 million on this tax lot.

The neighborhood

In SoHo, The bulk, or 46 percent of the 9.5 million square feet of commercial built space are office buildings, with mixed-use buildings next occupying 14 percent of the space. In sales, SoHo has 2 times the average sales volume among other neighborhoods with $514 million in sales volume in the last two years and is the 17th highest in Manhattan. For development, SoHo has had very little major development activity relative to other neighborhoods.It had 214,448 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 nine of the 15 commercial properties representing 240,910 square feet of the 360,552 square feet. The largest owner is Zar Property NY, followed by David Brown and then Crown Acquisitions.
There are no active new building construction projects on this tax block.

The majority, or 41 percent of the 360,552 square feet of built space are mixed-use buildings, with retail buildings next occupying 30 percent of the space.

The seller

The PincusCo database currently indicates that Crown Acquisitions owned at least six commercial properties with 107 residential units in New York City with 641,036 square feet and a city-determined market value of $573.3 million. (Market value is typically about 50% of actual value.) The portfolio has $11.5 million in debt, borrowed from East West Bank. Within the portfolio, the bulk, or 70 percent of the 641,036 square feet of built space are office properties, with D4 properties next occupying 22 percent of the space. The bulk, or 98 percent of the built space, is in Manhattan, with Brooklyn next at 2 percent of the space.

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