Flatiron Equities signs contract to buy Garment District office building from Falcon Properties

Flatiron Equities through the entity 152 W 36 Owner LLC signed a contract as purchaser with Falcon Properties through the entity Hadji Baba Properties Corp. as seller to buy the office building (O6) at 152 West 36th Street in Garment District, Manhattan. The sale price was not disclosed. In 2015, Signature Bank provided a $10 million loan secured by the property.
The memorandum of contract was signed on November 9, 2023 and was recorded on November 27, 2023. The property has 51,853 square feet of built space and 7,405 square feet of additional air rights for a total buildable of 59,240 square feet according to a PincusCo analysis of city data.
The signatory for Falcon Properties was David Zaga. The signatory for Flatiron Equities was Fred Leffel. The initial contract was signed July 12, 2023, and was amended on November 9. The closing date is set for February 7, 2024, but can be extended by the purchaser to March 8, 2024. The Masri family founded and runs Falcon Properties, which owns several commercial buildings in Manhattan. Flatiron Equities is led by managing member Fred Leffel.

Prior sales and revenue

Prior to this transaction, PincusCo has no record that the buyer Flatiron Equities had purchased any other properties and has no record it sold any properties over the past 24 months.
The seller Falcon Properties had not purchased any other properties and had not sold any properties over the same time period. The 51,853-square-foot property generated revenue of $1.6 million or $31 per square foot, according to the most recent income and expense figures.

The property

The office building in Garment District has 51,853 square feet of built space and 7,405 square feet of additional air rights for a total buildable of 59,240 square feet according to a PincusCo analysis of city data. The parcel has frontage of 60 feet and is 98 feet deep with a total lot size of 5,924 square feet. The zoning is M1-6 which allows for up to 10 times floor area ratio (FAR) for manufacturing The city-designated market value for the property in 2022 is $7.1 million. The most recent loan totaled $18 million and was provided by First Republic Bank on September 17, 2021.

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 $3,125 in ECB penalties and $3,475 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 Garment District, The majority, or 69 percent of the 51.8 million square feet of commercial built space are office buildings, with hotel buildings next occupying 12 percent of the space. In sales, Garment District has 1.7 times the average sales volume among other neighborhoods with $588.9 million in sales volume in the last two years and is the 24th highest in Manhattan. For development, Garment District is the 5th most active neighborhood among other neighborhoods. It had 6.2 million square feet of commercial and multi-family construction under development in the last two years, which represents 12 percent of the neighborhood’s built space. There was one pre-foreclosure suit filed among other office buildings in the past 12 months.

The block

On this tax block, PincusCo has identified the owners of seven of the 13 commercial properties representing 1,279,513 square feet of the 1,700,783 square feet. The largest owner is Sol Goldman Investments, followed by Noorollah Asherian and then Jia Lin Pan.
There are no active new building construction projects on this tax block.

The majority, or 98 percent of the 1.7 million square feet of built space are office buildings, with retail buildings next occupying 2 percent of the space.

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