Sotheby’s affiliate pays $82.5M to Columbia Property Trust for new office building in Long Island City
An entity at the address of Sotheby’s, 25-11 49th Avenue LLC paid $82.5 million to Columbia Property Trust through the entity Maple 49th Avenue Owner II, LLC, for office building Gantry Point at 25-11 49th Avenue in Long Island City, Queens.
The deal closed on January 21, 2022 and was recorded on February 8, 2022.
The property has 194,421 square feet of built space according to PincusCo analysis of city data. The sale price per built square foot is $424 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 February 7, 2018, for $39.7 million.
The signatory for Columbia Property Trust was Travis Feehan. The signatory for Sotheby’s was Steven Wrightson, who is director of operations at Sotheby’s. The auction company Sotheby’s was purchased by the billionaire Steven Drahi.
The seller Columbia Property Trust purchased one properties in one transactions for a total of $78 million and sold eight properties in two transactions for a total of $1.6 billion over the same time period.
Over the past five years, there have been 15 NYC Department of Buildings permit applications filed for this parcel valued at more than $20,000. Of those there was one major renovation application including a certificate of occupancy change (A1) filed with a total estimated value of $28.5 million. There were 13 renovation/alteration projects (A2) applied for with a total estimated value of $1.8 million.
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 B and were permitted on March 8, 2019.
Columbia Property Trust acquired Normandy Real Estate Partners in 2020. Steven Wrightson is director of operations at Sotheby’s which is located at the same address as buyer LLC.
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 78 percent of the 248,241 square feet of built space are office buildings, with specialty buildings next occupying 20 percent of the space.
Within a 400-foot radius of 25-11 49th Avenue, PincusCo identified one commercial real estate item of interests occurred over the past 24 months.
It was a loan which Charles Sommer borrowed $5.3 million from First National Bank of Long Island secured by the 10,500-square-foot, one-unit industrial (G1) on 25-61 49th Avenue on October 15, 2021.
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