Jeff Sutton’s Wharton Properties signs $95M refi for retail in Harlem
100 West 125th Street (Credit - Google)
Jeff Sutton’s Wharton Properties through the entity 125th & Lenox Owner LLC as borrower signed a refi loan with lender Valley National Bank valued at $95 million for the retail building (K6) at 100 West 125th Street in Harlem, Manhattan.
The deal closed on September 8, 2022 and was recorded on September 20, 2022. The prior lender was Morgan Stanley which held debt that had an original loan amount of $105 million. The property has 160,501 square feet of built space and 37,064 square feet of additional air rights for a total buildable of 197,456 square feet according to PincusCo analysis of city data. The loan price per built square foot is $591 and the price per buildable square foot is $481 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 owner bought the property on August 28, 2017, for $84.1 million. The signatory for Wharton Properties was Jeff Sutton. The signatories for Valley National Bank were Roger Rofe and Oren Sapertein.
The property
The 100 West 125th Street parcel has frontage of 150 feet and is 201 feet deep with a total lot size of 32,800 square feet. The zoning is C4-4D which allows for up to 3.4 times floor area ratio (FAR) for commercial and up to 6.02 times FAR for residential with inclusionary housing. The city-designated market value for the property in 2022 is $61.2 million.
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Development
For the tax lot building, it received its initial certificate of occupancy on December 12, 2016, for a 160,624-square-foot M building. The project was developed by Andrew Lester with plans filed January 18, 2013 and permitted June 26, 2014.
The neighborhood
In Harlem, the bulk, or 44 percent of the 79.8 million square feet of commercial built space are elevator buildings, with walkup buildings next occupying 30 percent of the space. In sales, Harlem has 2.5 times the average sales volume among other neighborhoods with $849 million in sales volume in the last two years and is the 18th highest in Manhattan. For development, Harlem has 3.1 times the average amount of major developments relative to other neighborhoods and is the 7th highest in Manhattan. It had 3 million square feet of commercial and multi-family construction under development in the last two years, which represents 4 percent of the neighborhood’s built space.
The block
On this tax block, PincusCo has identified the owners of six of the 13 commercial properties representing 158,379 square feet of the 525,800 square feet. The largest owner is Children’s Aid Society, followed by Artc and then Sol Goldman Investments.
There have been three new building construction projects filed totaling 295,894 square feet. The largest is a 160,624-square-foot M building developed by Andrew Lester with plans filed January 18, 2013 and permitted June 26, 2014. The second largest is a 68,296-square-foot A-3 building developed by Sheila Mcdaniel with plans filed December 27, 2017 and permitted October 6, 2021.
The majority, or 49 percent of the 427,462 square feet of built space are retail buildings, with office buildings next occupying 33 percent of the space.
The borrower
The PincusCo database currently indicates that Wharton Properties owned at least 100 commercial properties in New York City.
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