Jay Suites pays $35M for office building near Grand Central

The Srour family’s Jay Suites through the entity Jay On 38th Street, LLC paid $35 million to parnership for the office building (O6) at 8 West 38th Street in Grand Central, Manhattan. The expected use is cash flowing.
The purchase was financed with a $19 million loan from Citibank.
The deal closed on July 31, 2024 and was recorded on August 7, 2024. The property has 112,120 square feet of built space according to a PincusCo analysis of city data. The sale price per built square foot is $312 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 signatories for the seller partnership were William A. Felder, Joan Felder, David Schustak, Judith Schustack, and Seena Sperling. The signatory for Jay Suites was Jack Srour. The contract date was May 2, 2024.

Prior sales and revenue

Prior to this transaction, PincusCo has no record that the buyer Jay Suites had purchased any other properties and has no record it sold any properties over the past 24 months.
The seller William A. Felder had not purchased any other properties and had not sold any properties over the same time period.

The property

The office building in Grand Central has 112,120 square feet of built space according to a PincusCo analysis of city data. The parcel has frontage of 100 feet and is 98 feet deep with a total lot size of 9,875 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 $28.8 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 one DOB violation 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 Grand Central, The majority, or 83 percent of the 44.4 million square feet of commercial built space are office buildings, with hotel buildings next occupying 8 percent of the space. In sales, Grand Central has 2.6 times the average sales volume among other neighborhoods with $684.2 million in sales volume in the last two years and is the 12th highest in Manhattan. For development, Grand Central is the 10th most active neighborhood among other neighborhoods. It had 4.7 million square feet of commercial and multi-family construction under development in the last two years, which represents 11 percent of the neighborhood’s built space. There were four 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 nine of the 32 commercial properties representing 485,875 square feet of the 1,281,796 square feet. The largest owner is Elo Capital and then Joginder Sharma.
On the tax block, there was one new building construction project filed totaling 65,961 square feet. It is a 200-unit, 65,961 square-foot hotel/dormitory/shelter (R-1) building submitted by William Obeid with plans filed July 19, 2013 and permitted July 12, 2018.

The majority, or 76 percent of the 1.3 million square feet of built space are office buildings, with hotel buildings next occupying 18 percent of the space.

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