Billionaire Regeneron co-founder pays $9.6M for foreclosed Tribeca mixed-use

UPDATED, 4:50 p.m., March 20, 2024: The co-founder and president of the $105 billion drug company Regeneron, George Yancopoulos, paid $9.6 million for a five-story, mixed-use office and residential building at 44 Hudson Street in Tribeca, Manhattan. He bought the building through the entity 44 Hudson Holdings LLC, closing on the purchase March 11, 2024, two weeks after signing the contract on February 28, 2024. The sale was recorded today, March 20, 2024.

Yancopoulos, estimated by Forbes to have a net worth of $2.1 billion, plans to convert the building to a personal residence, according to a person familiar with the transaction.

The seller was Columbia Pacific Advisors, a Seattle-based lender that took the property back from the former owner, Grant Shapolsky’s Prime Manhattan Development, in August 2023.

Yancopoulos appears to have an interest in the area. He lent a total of $32.5 million to the owner of the adjacent property, 50 Hudson Street in April 2023, and also bought a single-family home in the West Village in mid-2023 according to a source.

The property 44 Hudson Street has 12,900 square feet of built space and 558 square feet of additional air rights for a total buildable of 13,454 square feet according to a PincusCo analysis of city data. The sale price per built square foot is $744 and the price per buildable square foot is $713 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 Columbia Pacific Advisors was Alan Spragins. The signatory for George Yancopoulos was George Yancopoulos.

Columbia Pacific Advisors was the senior lender with an $11.5 million loan provided after the seller bought the property on September 27, 2018, for $14 million.

Following an alleged default, Columbia filed a pre-foreclosure action (850027/2022) in January 2022.

The August 2023 property transfer is an equity transfer through an August 15, 2023, UCC auction, in which Pacific made a credit bid of $5 million and took control of the equity formerly controlled by Grant Shapolsky’s Prime Manhattan Development. Chesterfield Faring at some point held an equity stake, according to RealFund.io documents. A Chesterfield Faring executive was copied on some emails discussing the loan default disclosed in the foreclosure filings.
The transfer closed on August 22, 2023 and was recorded on October 19, 2023.

The property

The office building with 3 residential units in Tribeca has 12,900 square feet of built space and 558 square feet of additional air rights for a total buildable of 13,454 square feet according to a PincusCo analysis of city data. The parcel has frontage of 25 feet and is 97 feet deep with a total lot size of 2,235 square feet. The lot is irregular. The zoning is C6-2A which allows for up to 6 times floor area ratio (FAR) for commercial and up to 6.02 times FAR for residential with inclusionary housing. The property is in the Tribeca West Historic District. The city-designated market value for the property in 2022 is $4.1 million.

Violations and lawsuits

According to city public data, the property has received $3,000 in OATH penalties in the last year.

There were no lawsuits or bankruptcies filed against the property for the past 24 months.

The neighborhood

In Tribeca, The bulk, or 47 percent of the 15.3 million square feet of commercial built space are office buildings, with elevator buildings next occupying 28 percent of the space. In sales, Tribeca has near average sales volume among other neighborhoods with $490 million in sales volume in the last two years and is the 19th highest in Manhattan. For development, Tribeca has near average amount of major developments among other neighborhoods and is the 14th highest in Manhattan. It had 2.3 million square feet of commercial and multi-family construction under development in the last two years, which represents 15 percent of the neighborhood’s built space.

The block

On this tax block, PincusCo has identified the owners of four of the nine commercial properties representing 836,540 square feet of the 855,501 square feet. The largest owner is ASG Equities, followed by Columbia Pacific Advisors and then Kenneth Maisler. There are no active new building construction projects on this tax block.

The owner

The PincusCo database currently indicates that Columbia Pacific Advisors owned at least one commercial property with three residential units in New York City with 12,900 square feet and a city-determined market value of $4.1 million. (Market value is typically about 50% of actual value.) The portfolio consists of at least a single office property. It is located in Manhattan.

Correction: A prior version of this post misspelled the name Regeneron in the headline.
Direct link to the property’s ACRIS page and link to DOB NOW portal.