New Empire Corp. pays $25.7M to Ciampa Organization for dev site in Long Island City

New Empire Corp. through the entity Nere 218 Management LLC paid $25.7 million to Ciampa Organization through the entity 1129 Valley LLC for the development site composed of a retail building at 24-01 Queens Plaza North in Long Island City, Queens and an industrial building at 41-43 24th Street in Long Island City, Queens.
To finance the purchase, New Empire Corp. through the entity NERE 218 Management LLC as borrower signed an acquisition loan with lender Pacific National Bank valued at $14.3 million for the two properties. The deal closed on January 24, 2022 and was recorded on February 11, 2022.

The two properties have 8,500 square feet of built space and 62,211 square feet of additional air rights for a total buildable of 70,718 square feet according to PincusCo analysis of city data. The sale price per built square foot is $3,021 and the price per buildable square foot is $363 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 Ciampa Organization was Michael D. Morici Jr. The signatory for New Empire Corp. was Bentley Zhao.
Prior to this transaction, the buyer New Empire Corp. purchased three properties in one transactions for a total of $14.8 million and sold one properties in one transactions for a total of $3.1 million over the past 24 months.
The seller Ciampa Organization had not purchased any other properties and sold one property in one transactios for a total of $5.8 million over the same time period.
The two properties with a total of 8,500 square feet of built space generated revenue of $409,445 per year or $48 per square foot. The sale price per square foot was $3,021.

There has been one demolition project filed for the parcels over the past five years. One of the projects were to change the building from a COM to a A-2 and were permitted on May 21, 2012.

In Long Island City, the bulk, or 33 percent of the 66.2 million square feet of built space are residential elevator buildings, with industrial buildings next occupying 30 percent of the space. In sales, Long Island City has 4.2 times the average sales volume among other neighborhoods with $1.2 billion in sales volume in the last two years and is the highest in Queens. For development, Long Island City is the 2nd most active neighborhood among other neighborhoods. It had 9.2 million square feet of commercial and multi-family construction under development in the last two years, which represents 14 percent of the neighborhood’s built space.
On the tax block, the majority, or 93 percent of the 360,514 square feet of built space are residential elevator buildings, with residential walkup buildings next occupying 3 percent of the space.
Within a 400-foot radius of 24-01 Queens Plaza North, PincusCo identified six commercial real estate items of interest that occurred over the past 24 months.
Of those six items, one was for major renovation including a certificate of occupancy change. It was a permit application filed on December 17, 2021 for the $21.2 million renovation of 195,368-square-foot B building with 0 residential units at 24-02 Queens Plaza South.
One of those six items was a sale which Grubb Properties bought the 54,000-square-foot, 20-unit office building (O5) on 25-01 Queens Plaza North and one other property for $63 million from Vasilios Falidas on September 28, 2021.
Of those six items, four were loans above $5 million totaling $85.8 million. The most recent of the four was Grubb Properties which borrowed $25 million from Emerald Creek Capital secured by the 54,000-square-foot, 20-unit office building (O5) on 25-01 Queens Plaza North and one other property on January 5, 2022.

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