Lam Group pays $19.2M in long-planned transaction for hotel, rental condo units in Harlem

Lam Group through the entity 233 West 125th Street Danforth, LLC paid $19.2 million to Harlem Community Development Corporation for four commercial condominium units for retail, hotel, residential and garage, in the new construction building at 233 West 125th Street in Harlem, Manhattan.
The deal closed on April 12, 2024 and was recorded on April 24, 2024.
The signatory for Harlem Community Development Corporation was Curtis L. Archer. The signatory for Lam Group was Kin Chung Lam, who is also known as John Lam. The contract date was August 4, 2015.

In 2022, Lam Group and Exact Capital Group borrowed $167.5 million for the construction of the building.

This is a purchase of four of the six commercial condominium units that make up the building at 233 West 125th Street. The building was legally reconfigured into a condominium structure that was recorded in December 2023.

The unit sizes start on p. 31 of the condominium declaration. Condo unit 1001 is Mixed Income Residential Unit with 126 units over 86,211 square feet; unit 1003 is Commercial Unit with 23,649 square feet; unit 1004 is the Garage Unit with 10,183 square feet; and unit 1005 is the Hotel Unit, with 211 keys in 143,423 square feet. The nonprofit Harlem Community Development Corporation has retained two units, condo 1002, the Low income Residential Unit with 65 units in 48,046 square feet and unit 1006, the Cultural Unit with 27,006 square feet.

Because multiple properties have been transacted, some of the following sections will follow the property with the largest assessed value, which in this case, is the property on 233 West 125th Street.

Prior sales and revenue

Prior to this transaction, PincusCo has no record that the buyer Lam Group had purchased any other properties and has no record it sold any properties over the past 24 months.
The seller Harlem Community Development Corporation had not purchased any other properties and had not sold any properties over the same time period.

The property

PincusCo cannot determine the lot area of the 233 West 125th Street parcel at this time.

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 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 $1 million on this tax lot.

The block

On the tax block of 233 West 125th Street, PincusCo has identified the owners of two of the 13 commercial properties representing 479,809 square feet of the 875,122 square feet. The two identified owners are Lam Group and Jem Realty Management.
On the tax block, there were three new building construction projects totaling 475,707 square feet. The largest is a 191-unit, 375,187 square-foot residential (R-2) building submitted by Lam Group and filed by Keith Lam with plans filed September 24, 2014 and permitted December 28, 2015. The second largest is a 82-unit, 69,512 square-foot residential (R-2) building submitted by Joel Weiss and filed by Joel Weiss with plans filed January 26, 2022 and permitted April 8, 2022.

The majority, or 50 percent of the 875,122 square feet of built space are elevator buildings, with office buildings next occupying 30 percent of the space.

The buyer

The PincusCo database currently indicates that Lam Group owned at least eight commercial properties with 192 residential units in New York City with 1,432,846 square feet and a city-determined market value of $400.3 million. (Market value is typically about 50% of actual value.) The portfolio has $500.1 million in debt, with top three lenders as Shanghai Commercial Bank, H.I.G. Capital, and Deutsche Bank respectively. Within the portfolio, the bulk, or 70 percent of the 1,432,846 square feet of built space are hotel properties, with elevator properties next occupying 28 percent of the space. The bulk, or 81 percent of the built space, is in Manhattan, with Brooklyn next at 19 percent of the space.

Direct link to Acris document. link