Rockabill Development signs $33.1M rehab loan with Chase for UWS hotel

Rockabill Development in a partnership with the nonprofit Goddard Riverside through the entity 235 West 107th Street LLC as borrower signed a rehab construction loan with lender JPMorgan Chase valued at $33.1 million for the 95-unit hotel building (HS) at 235 West 107th Street in Upper West Side, Manhattan.
The deal closed on March 10, 2023 and was recorded on March 20, 2023. The prior lender was Enterprise Community Partners which held debt that had an original loan amount of $15.9 million.
The property has 21,144 square feet of built space according to PincusCo analysis of city data. The loan price per built square foot is $1,566 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 owner bought the property on May 26, 2021, for $12.6 million. The signatory for Rockabill Development was Niall J. Murray. The signatory for JPMorgan Chase was Sharmi Sobhan.

Prior sales and revenue

The owners according to the Department of Housing Preservation and Development includes Rod Jones, head officer and Giselle Torres, site manager. The business entities are Grc Management and 235 West 107th St. Llc.

The property

The 235 West 107th Street parcel has frontage of 50 feet and is 100 feet deep with a total lot size of 5,046 square feet. The zoning is R8B which allows for up to 4 times floor area ratio (FAR) for residential. The city-designated market value for the property in 2022 is $3.3 million.The most recent loan totaled $15.9 million and was provided by Enterprise Community Partners on May 26, 2021.

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 four housing violations, $1,650 in OATH penalties, and one housing litigation 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 Upper West Side, the majority, or 59 percent of the 53 million square feet of commercial built space are elevator buildings, with walkup buildings next occupying 23 percent of the space. In sales, Upper West Side has the 7th highest sale turnover among other neighborhoods in the city with $2.2 billion in sales volume in the last two years. For development, Upper West Side has 2.8 times the average amount of major developments relative to other neighborhoods and is the 10th highest in Manhattan. It had 2.9 million square feet of commercial and multi-family construction under development in the last two years, which represents 5 percent of the neighborhood’s built space.

The block

On this tax block, PincusCo has identified the owners of seven of the 20 commercial properties representing 129,807 square feet of the 347,022 square feet. The largest owner is Goddard Riverside Community Center, followed by Emerald Equity Group and then Charles Nicholas.
There are no active new building construction projects on this tax block.

The majority, or 42 percent of the 347,022 square feet of built space are elevator buildings, with walkup buildings next occupying 40 percent of the space.

The borrower

The PincusCo database currently indicates that Rockabill Development owned at least three commercial properties in New York City with 62,640 square feet and a city-determined market value of $5.5 million. (Market value is typically about 50% of actual value.) The portfolio has $21.6 million in debt, borrowed from NYC Housing Development Corporation. Within the portfolio, all identified are walkup properties. They are all located in Queens.

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