Jeff Sutton sells Whitestone dev site for $3M to church

Jeff Sutton’s Wharton Properties through the entity 11-10/12 154th Street LLC sold for $3 million the development parcels (V1) at 11-08 and 11-10 154th Street in Whitestone, Queen to the Little Flock Church.

Jeff Sutton sold two Fifth Avenue buildings in December and January for $1.8 billion, including the largest investment sale of 2023, $835 million to Prada for 720 and 724 Fifth Avenue.
The deal closed on February 14, 2024 and was recorded on February 28, 2024. The two properties have zero square feet of built space and 7,281 square feet of additional air rights for a total buildable of 7,281 square feet according to a PincusCo analysis of city data. The sale price per buildable square foot is $412 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 Wharton Properties was Jeff Sutton. The contract date was November 3, 2023. Jeff Sutton bought the property in January 2007 for $3 million. In 2013, the property had $3.3 million in debt from Signature Bank. Little Flock Church has a location in Woodside.

Prior sales and revenue

Prior to this transaction, PincusCo has no record that the buyer Little Flock Church had purchased any other properties and sold one property in one transactions for a total of $3 million over the past 24 months.
The seller Wharton Properties purchased six properties in four transactions for a total of $34.9 million and sold 15 properties in 11 transactions for a total of $1.9 billion over the same time period.

The property

The parcel has frontage of 60 feet and is 133 feet deep with a total lot size of 8,014 square feet. The zoning is R2A which allows for up to 0.5 times floor area ratio (FAR) for residential. The city-designated market value for the property in 2022 is $663,000. The most recent loan totaled 0.0 and was provided by Blackstone Group on December 14, 2023.

Violations and lawsuits

There were no lawsuits or bankruptcies filed against the properties for the past 24 months. In addition, according to city public data, the properties have received five DOB violations 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 Whitestone, The bulk, or 27 percent of the 2.6 million square feet of commercial built space are specialty buildings, with mixed-use buildings next occupying 21 percent of the space. In sales, Whitestone has the 27th highest sale turnover among other neighborhoods in Queens with $60 million in sales volume in the last two years. For development, Whitestone has had very little major development activity relative to other neighborhoods.It had 11,877 square feet of commercial and multi-family construction under development in the last two years, which represents 0.46 percent of the neighborhood’s built space.

The block

On the tax block of 11-08 154th Street, PincusCo has identified the owners of two of the six commercial properties representing zero square feet of the 78,870 square feet. The identified owner is Wharton Properties.
There are no active new building construction projects on this tax block.

The majority, or 81 percent of the 78,870 square feet of built space are specialty buildings, with mixed-use buildings next occupying 19 percent of the space.

The seller

The PincusCo database currently indicates that Wharton Properties owned at least 89 commercial properties with 212 residential units in New York City with 3,676,926 square feet and a city-determined market value of $1.9 billion. (Market value is typically about 50% of actual value.) The portfolio has $261.6 million in debt, with top three lenders as Valley National Bank, Bank of China, and Provident Bank respectively. Within the portfolio, the bulk, or 71 percent of the 3,676,926 square feet of built space are office properties, with retail properties next occupying 18 percent of the space. The bulk, or 86 percent of the built space, is in Manhattan, with Brooklyn next at 10 percent of the space.

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