Joseph Nazar pays $15.4M for office in Garment District

Joseph Nazar through the entity 221 W 37th Street Realty Group LLC paid $15.4 million to a group of sellers including Massood-Matt Cohen, Zoheir Aghravi, Mehran Cohen, and Azita Aghravi through the entity 221 Mc LLC (and others) for the midblock office building at 221 West 37th Street in Garment District, Manhattan.
The deal closed on May 25, 2022 and was recorded on June 10, 2022. The property has 21,180 square feet of built space and 14,120 square feet of additional air rights for a total buildable of 35,300 square feet according to PincusCo analysis of city data. The sale price per built square foot is $729 and the price per buildable square foot is $437 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 Massood-Matt Cohen, Zoheir Aghravi, Mehran Cohen, and Azita Aghravi was Massood-Matt Cohen, Zoheir Aghravi, Mehran Cohen, and Azita Aghravi. The signatory for Joseph Nazar was Joseph Nazar. Joseph Nazar is CEO of women’s clothing company Studio Nazar in the Garment District.

Prior sales and revenue

Prior to this transaction, Pincusco has no record that the buyer Joseph Nazar had purchased any other properties and has no record it sold any properties over the past 24 months.
The seller Massood-Matt Cohen had not purchased any other properties and had not sold any properties over the same time period. The 21,180-square-foot property generated revenue of $964,325 or $46 per square foot, according to the most recent income and expense figures.

The property

The 221 West 37th Street parcel has frontage of 35 feet and is 98 feet deep with a total lot size of 3,530 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 $3.3 million.

Violations and lawsuits

There were no lawsuits or bankruptcies filed against the property since September of 2020. In addition, according to city public data, the property has not received any significant violations in the last year.

Development

There are no active new building construction projects or major alteration projects with initial costs more than $5 million on this tax lot.

The neighborhood

In Garment District, the majority, or 69 percent of the 53 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 4.1 times the average sales volume among other neighborhoods with $1.1 billion in sales volume in the last two years and is the 9th highest in Manhattan. For development, Garment District has had very little major development activity relative to other neighborhoods.It had 561,900 square feet of commercial and multi-family construction under development in the last two years, which represents 1 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 three of the 17 commercial properties representing 928,672 square feet of the 2,750,711 square feet. The largest owner is Solil Management, followed by Meyer Equities and then Investcorp International Realty. There are no active new building construction projects on this tax block.

The majority, or 90 percent of the 2.8 million square feet of built space are office buildings, with industrial buildings next occupying 9 percent of the space.

Surrounding

Within a 400-foot radius of 221 West 37th Street, PincusCo identified six commercial real estate items of interests occurred over the past 24 months.
Of those six items, two were for major renovation including a certificate of occupancy change. They were two initial temporary certificate of occupancy issuances for projects that initially costed $1.8 million. The most recent of these two items was the temporary certificate of occupancy on October 5, 2020 for a 842,295-square-foot B building with N/A residential units at 498 Seventh Avenue.
Of those six items, four were loans above $5 million totaling $133.2 million. The most recent of the four was Faraj Srour which borrowed $45.1 million from New York Community Bank secured by the 112,578-square-foot, 15-unit office building (O6) on 255 West 36th Street on March 21, 2022.

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