Premier Equities pays $10.5M to global art gallery for office townhouse in Lenox Hill
32 East 69th Street (Credit - Google)
Premier Equities, led by Uzi Ben Abraham and Yaron Jacobi, through the entity Premier 32 East 69th Street, LLC paid $10.5 million to the international art gallery and publisher Hauser & Wirth through the entity 32 East 69th Street, LLC for the office building (O2) at 32 East 69th Street in Lenox Hill, Manhattan. The expected use is cash flowing.
The deal closed on April 18, 2025 and was recorded on April 24, 2025. The property has 7,065 square feet of built space and 13,521 square feet of additional air rights for a total buildable of 20,580 square feet according to a PincusCo analysis of city data. The sale price per built square foot is $1,486 and the price per buildable square foot is $510 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 Hauser & Wirth was Caspar Spescha . The signatory for Premier Equities was Mark Mermel . The contract date was February 27, 2025. Ursula Hauser co-founded Hauser & Wirth.
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Prior sales and revenue
Prior to this transaction, PincusCo has records that the buyer Premier Equities purchased three properties in three transactions for a total of $58.2 million and sold three properties in three transactions for a total of $64.3 million over the past 24 months.
The seller Hauser & Wirth had not purchased any other properties and had not sold any properties over the same time period. The 7,065-square-foot property generated revenue of $748,085 or $106 per square foot, according to the most recent income and expense figures.
The property
The office building in Lenox Hill has 7,065 square feet of built space and 13,521 square feet of additional air rights for a total buildable of 20,580 square feet according to a PincusCo analysis of city data. The parcel has frontage of 20 feet and is 100 feet deep with a total lot size of 2,058 square feet. The zoning is C5-1 which allows for up to 4 times floor area ratio (FAR) for commercial and up to 10 times FAR for residential with inclusionary housing. The property is in the Upper East Side Historic District. The city-designated market value for the property in 2022 is $4 million.
Violations and lawsuits
There were no lawsuits or bankruptcies filed against the property for the past 24 months. 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 $1 million on this tax lot.
The neighborhood
In Lenox Hill, The bulk, or 34 percent of the 53.3 million square feet of commercial built space are elevator buildings, with specialty buildings next occupying 30 percent of the space. In sales, Lenox Hill has the highest sale turnover among other neighborhoods in the city with $4 billion in sales volume in the last two years. For development, Lenox Hill has 3.3 times the average amount of major developments relative to other neighborhoods and is the 9th highest in Manhattan. It had 3.9 million square feet of commercial and multi-family construction under development in the last two years, which represents 7 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 10 of the 22 commercial properties representing 122,433 square feet of the 280,869 square feet. The largest owner is Friedland Properties, followed by Benchmark Real Estate Group and then Maria Catsoulis Kempf.
There are no active new building construction projects on this tax block.
The majority, or 36 percent of the 280,869 square feet of built space are office buildings, with mixed-use buildings next occupying 27 percent of the space.
The buyer
The PincusCo database currently indicates that Premier Equities owned at least nine commercial properties with 60 residential units in New York City with 97,689 square feet and a city-determined market value of $46.1 million. (Market value is typically about 50% of actual value.) The portfolio has $142.3 million in debt, with top three lenders as Signature Bank, Acadia Realty Trust, and Metropolitan Commercial Bank respectively. Within the portfolio, the bulk, or 34 percent of the 97,689 square feet of built space are mixed-use properties, with walkup properties next occupying 23 percent of the space. The bulk, or 75 percent of the built space, is in Manhattan, with Queens next at 25 percent of the space.
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