Sono Hospitality pays $60M to Ghassemieh family for hotel in Financial District

Sono Hospitality Group through the entity Sono Legit NY LLC paid $60 million to Alex Ghassemieh and Bob Ghassemieh through the entity Hhc 33 Peck Slip Holdings, LLC for hotel building (HB) at 33 Peck Slip in Financial District, Manhattan.
The deal closed on January 9, 2023 and was recorded on January 19, 2023. The property has 39,747 square feet of built space according to PincusCo analysis of city data. The sale price per built square foot is $1,509 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 seller bought the property on January 29, 2016, for $38.3 million. The signatory for Alex Ghassemieh and Bob Ghassemieh was Alex Ghassemieh and Bob Ghassemieh. The signatory for Sono Hospitality Group was Gunju Hwang. The contract date was October 10, 2022. The sole member of the owner entity was Grandview SHG LLC, which was listed as a Howard Hughes Corporation entity in a 2018 SEC filing.  Alex Ghassemieh and Bob Ghassemieh bought out partner Howard Hughes Corporation in 2020, The Real Deal reported.

Prior sales and revenue

Prior to this transaction, PincusCo has no record that the buyer Sono Hospitality Group had purchased any other properties and has no record it sold any properties over the past 24 months.
The seller Alex Ghassemieh had not purchased any other properties and had not sold any properties over the same time period. The former owners according to the Department of Housing Preservation and Development includes Babak Ghassemieh, head officer and Rosalia Grippi, agent. The business entities are Hhc 33 Peck Slip Holding, Llc and Hhc 33 Peck Slip Holdings Llc.

The property

The 33 Peck Slip parcel has frontage of 61 feet and is 98 feet deep with a total lot size of 6,204 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 South Street Seaport Historic District. The city-designated market value for the property in 2022 is $11.7 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 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 $5 million on this tax lot.

The neighborhood

In Financial District, the majority, or 74 percent of the 80.1 million square feet of commercial built space are office buildings, with elevator buildings next occupying 15 percent of the space. In sales, Financial District has the 4th highest sale turnover among other neighborhoods in the city with $2.4 billion in sales volume in the last two years. For development, Financial District is the 3rd most active neighborhood among other neighborhoods. It had 9.3 million square feet of commercial and multi-family construction under development in the last two years, which represents 12 percent of the neighborhood’s built space. There was one pre-foreclosure suit filed among other hotel buildings in the past 12 months.

The block

On this tax block, PincusCo has identified the owners of five of the 17 commercial properties representing 73,906 square feet of the 190,485 square feet. The largest owner is Werber Management, followed by Under The Bridge LLC and then REDA Holdings.
There are no active new building construction projects on this tax block.

The majority, or 37 percent of the 184,585 square feet of built space are elevator buildings, with mixed-use buildings next occupying 23 percent of the space.

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