Tesla pays $18M to Wildflower for charging station in Maspeth, 4 months after Musk fired Supercharger team
UPDATED 4:45 a.m., August 27, 2024: Elon Musk’s Tesla Inc. through the entity Tesla US Property Holdings LLC, paid Adam Gordon’s Wildflower Ltd. $18 million for a 40,037-square-foot surface parking lot with the address 48-26 54th Road in Maspeth, Queens. The car manufacturer will build one of its large fast-charging Supercharger station there, city records indicate. The transaction closed four months after reports that Musk fired nearly all of the 500-member Supercharger team in late April, then began rehiring some of them back, including Max de Zegher, as Bloomberg reported, who signed on behalf of Tesla in the purchase.
Musk said in May in a post on X that his firm plans to spend more than $500 million to expand the Supercharger network. “Just to reiterate: Tesla will be spending well over $500 million this year to expand the Supercharger network to create thousands of NEW charging stations. That’s just for new locations and expansions, not including operating costs, which are much higher.”
The sale closed on August 16, 2024, and was recorded on August 26, 2024. The transaction went into contract on August 1, 2024.
The signatory for Tesla was Maximillian de Zegher, who leads the company’s charging business as a director. The signatory for Wildflower Ltd. was Adam I. Gordon.
Wildflower bought this parcel and another to the south for $23.3 million in February 2020. At the time, they were a single tax lot under the address 54-20 50th Street. They were subsequently divided into two tax lots. City records do not show a sale of the other parcel.
Tesla has scores of its slower “destination charging” stations in New York City, but has only a handful of Supercharging stations, shown in red.
The property
The parcel has frontage of 240 feet and is 158 feet deep with a total lot size of 40,036 square feet. The lot is irregular. The zoning is M2-1 which allows for up to 2 times floor area ratio (FAR) for manufacturing.
Development
Over the past five years, there has been no NYC Department of Buildings new building, demolition, or alteration permit application valued at more than $20,000 filed for this parcel.
Violations and lawsuits
According to city public data, the property has not received any significant violations in the last year.
There were no lawsuits or bankruptcies filed against the property for the past 24 months.
The neighborhood
In Maspeth, The majority, or 73 percent of the 22.3 million square feet of commercial built space are industrial buildings, with specialty buildings next occupying 8 percent of the space. In sales, Maspeth has near average sales volume among other neighborhoods with $302.9 million in sales volume in the last two years and is the 4th highest in Queens. For development, Maspeth has near average amount of major developments among other neighborhoods and is the 11th highest in Queens. It had 597,498 square feet of commercial and multi-family construction under development in the last two years, which represents 3 percent of the neighborhood’s built space.
The block
On this tax block, PincusCo has identified the owners of four of the five commercial properties representing 47,907 square feet of the 47,907 square feet. The largest owner is Hylan, followed by Wildflower Ltd. and then Triangle Services. There are no active new building construction projects on this tax block.
The surrounding
Within a 400-foot radius of 48-26 54 Road, PincusCo identified three commercial real estate items of interests occurred over the past 24 months. Of those three items, two were sales above $5 million totaling $20.3 million. The most recent of the two was Hylan which bought the 3,000-square-foot, one-unit office building (O1) on 54-65 48th Street for $7.2 million from Joseph Parisi and Michael Parisi estate on July 5, 2023. One of those three items was a loan which Triangle Services borrowed $11.7 million from Fifth Third Bank secured by the 8,000-square-foot, one-unit industrial (E1) on 54-37 48th Street on April 21, 2023.
Direct link to the property’s ACRIS page and link to DOB NOW portal.