Lee family pays $32M for retail in Oakland Gardens

Ui Kun Lee of the Lee family based in Manhattan through the entity Main 15-Lee Springfield LLC paid $32 million to Alfredo Li through the entity Mandarin Realty NY LLC for the retail strip mall (K1) at 61-01 Springfield Boulevard in Oakland Gardens, Queens.
This property is half of a retail strip mall that occupies a corner at Springfield Boulevard and the Long Island Expressway. The other half of the mall, the portion facing the Long Island Expressway, is owned by investor Albert Malekan.

The deal closed on July 28, 2022 and was recorded on August 3, 2022. The property has 33,390 square feet of built space and 8,262 square feet of additional air rights for a total buildable of 41,312 square feet according to PincusCo analysis of city data. The sale price per built square foot is $958 and the price per buildable square foot is $774 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 Alfredo Li was Alfredo Li. The signatory for Ui Kun Lee was Hye-Chun Lee. Robert Khodadadian led a team from Skyline Properties that also included Daniel Shirazi and Stephen Tang, that brokered both sides of the deal.
Credit and national tenants in the mall include the Chase, United States Postal Office, Walgreens, UPS, Red Mango and Subway. The deal traded at a 4.6 percent cap rate, according to a person familiar with the deal.

Prior sales and revenue

Prior to this transaction, Pincusco has no record that the buyer Ui Kun Lee had purchased any other properties and has no record it sold any properties over the past 24 months.
The seller Alfredo Li had not purchased any other properties and had not sold any properties over the same time period. The 33,390-square-foot property generated revenue of $1.8 million or $53 per square foot, according to the most recent income and expense figures.

The property

The 61-01 Springfield Blvd parcel has frontage of 482 feet and is 409 feet deep with a total lot size of 82,625 square feet. The lot is irregular. The zoning is R3-2 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 $9.4 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 received $1,050 in OATH penalties 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 Oakland Gardens, the bulk, or 45 percent of the 1.5 million square feet of commercial built space are specialty buildings, with walkup buildings next occupying 36 percent of the space. In sales, Oakland Gardens has not had any sales in the last two years. For development, Oakland Gardens has 1.4 times the average amount of major developments relative to other neighborhoods and is the 7th highest in Queens. It had 1.4 million square feet of commercial and multi-family construction under development in the last two years, which represents 95 percent of the neighborhood’s built space.

The block

On this tax block, PincusCo has identified the owners of one of the three commercial properties representing 74,650 square feet of the 141,131 square feet. The identified owner is Cammeby’s International Group.
There are no active new building construction projects on this tax block.

The majority, or 53 percent of the 141,131 square feet of built space are walkup buildings, with retail buildings next occupying 47 percent of the space.

The buyer

The PincusCo database currently indicates that Ui Kun Lee owned at least one other commercial property in New York City with 132,844 square feet and a city-determined market value of $22.5 million. (Market value is typically about 50% of actual value.) The portfolio has $35 million in debt, borrowed from Bank of Hope. The portfolio consists of at least a single office property. The property is 38 West 32nd Street, and is located in Manhattan.

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