Helm Management signs $49.9M refi for hotel in Garment District

Helm Management through the entity 310 Group, LLC as borrower signed a refi loan with lender JPMorgan Chase valued at $49.9 million for the Aliz Hotel Times Square building (H2) at 310 West 40th Street in the Garment District, Manhattan.
The deal closed on March 12, 2024 and was recorded on March 15, 2024. The prior lender was an entity with the signatory Cindy Zhang which held debt that had an original loan amount of $40 million.
The property has 114,917 square feet of built space according to a PincusCo analysis of city data. The loan price per built square foot is $434 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 Helm Management was Abraham Noy.

The property

The hotel building in Garment District has 114,917 square feet of built space according to a PincusCo analysis of city data. The parcel has frontage of 50 feet and is 98 feet deep with a total lot size of 4,937 square feet. The zoning is C6-4 which allows for up to 10 times floor area ratio (FAR) for commercial and up to 10 times FAR for residential with inclusionary housing. The city-designated market value for the property in 2022 is $25.2 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 six DOB violations and $1,350 in OATH penalties in the last year.

Development

For the tax lot building, it received its initial certificate of occupancy on August 30, 2018. 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 the 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 2.2 times the average sales volume among other neighborhoods with $629.9 million in sales volume in the last two years and is the 15th highest in Manhattan. For development, Garment District is the 5th most active neighborhood among other neighborhoods. It had 6.7 million square feet of commercial and multi-family construction under development in the last two years, which represents 13 percent of the neighborhood’s built space. There was one pre-foreclosure suit filed among other hotel buildings in the past 12 months.

The block

On this tax block, PincusCo has identified the owners of 12 of the 31 commercial properties representing 863,772 square feet of the 1,572,885 square feet. The largest owner is Son Dinh Tran, followed by S.W. Management and then McSam Hotel Group.
On the tax block, there were seven new building construction projects totaling 339,482 square feet. The largest is a 612-unit, 177,581 square-foot hotel/dormitory/shelter (R-1) building submitted by McSam Hotel Group and filed by Sam Chang with plans filed March 21, 2014 and permitted August 14, 2014. The second largest is a 120-unit, 44,430 square-foot hotel/dormitory/shelter (R-1) building submitted by Brian Law with plans filed September 10, 2015 and it has not been permitted yet.

The majority, or 71 percent of the 1.6 million square feet of built space are hotel buildings, with office buildings next occupying 19 percent of the space.

The borrower

The PincusCo database currently indicates that Helm Management owned at least nine commercial properties with 127 residential units in New York City with 106,953 square feet and a city-determined market value of $34.9 million. (Market value is typically about 50% of actual value.) The portfolio has $90.4 million in debt, with top three lenders as City National Bank, Valley National Bank, and Kearny Bank respectively. Within the portfolio, the bulk, or 40 percent of the 106,953 square feet of built space are walkup properties, with elevator properties next occupying 35 percent of the space. They are all located in Manhattan.

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