Torchlight Investors pays $21.1M to DWS Group for retail in Meatpacking District, down from $34M in 2011

Torchlight Investors through the entity Jpmcc 2016-Jp3 415 West 13th Street LLC paid $21.1 million to DWS Group through the entity BVK New York Retail LLC for the retail condo at 415 West 13th Street in the Meatpacking District, Manhattan.
The deal closed on April 4, 2022 and was recorded on May 16, 2022. The property has 11,166 square feet of built space according to PincusCo analysis of city data. The sale price per built square foot is $1,890 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 July 7, 2011, for $34 million. The signatory for DWS Group was Kristin Strange and Kristin Catalano. The signatory for Torchlight Investors was Jorge Rodriguez. DWS Group, formerly known as Deutsche Asset Management, was previously affiliated with Deutsche Bank but was spun off in 2018.

Prior sales and revenue

Prior to this transaction, Pincusco has records that the buyer Torchlight Investors purchased one properties in one transactions for a total of $56.9 million and has no record it sold any properties over the past 24 months.

The property

The 415 West 13th Street parcel has a total lot size of 11,166 square feet. The city-designated market value for the property in 2022 is $12.9 million.

Violations and lawsuits

The property was involved in one lawsuit and zero bankruptcies over the past two years. The suit was a $18 million commercial foreclosure concerning a loan, with the case filed on April 16, 2021, by Wells Fargo Bank against BVK. In addition, according to city public data, the property has not received any significant violations in the last year.

Development

For the tax lot building, it received its initial certificate of occupancy on September 7, 2012. On these lots, there is one active major alteration construction project for a 74,903-square-foot retail (M) building. The project was developed by Philip Katz with plans filed April 21, 2016 and permitted October 17, 2016.

The neighborhood

In Meatpacking District, the bulk, or 25 percent of the 2.3 million square feet of commercial built space are retail buildings, with residential elevator buildings next occupying 20 percent of the space. In sales, Meatpacking District has 1.2 times the average sales volume among other neighborhoods with $343.7 million in sales volume in the last two years and is the 27th highest in Manhattan. For development, Meatpacking District has had very little major development activity relative to other neighborhoods.It had 5,419 square feet of commercial and multi-family construction under development in the last two years, which represents 0.24 percent of the neighborhood’s built space.

The block

On this tax block, PincusCo has identified the owners of four of the 23 commercial properties representing 300,632 square feet of the 854,619 square feet. The largest owner is Aurora Capital Associates, followed by Romanoff Equities and then Rockfeld Group.

The majority, or 61 percent of the 603,223 square feet of built space are office buildings, with retail buildings next occupying 28 percent of the space.

The buyer

The PincusCo database currently indicates that Torchlight Investors owned at least one commercial property with 300,359 square feet and a city-determined market value of $128 million. (Market value is typically about 50% of actual value.) The portfolio consists of at least a single hotel property. It is located in Manhattan.

Surrounding

Within a 400-foot radius of 415 West 13th Street, PincusCo identified nine commercial real estate items of interests occurred over the past 24 months.
Of those nine items, two were for major renovation including a certificate of occupancy change. They were one permit applications with a total initial cost of $500,000 and one initial temporary certificate of occupancy issuance for a project that initially costed $4.5 million. The most recent of these two items was the temporary certificate of occupancy on March 2, 2021 for a 44,651-square-foot office (B) building with no residential units at 405 West 13th Street.
Of those nine items, three were sales above $5 million totaling $319.2 million. The most recent of the three was Meadow Partners which bought the ground lease for the 115,173-square-foot, eight-unit office building (O6) on 860 Washington Street for $232 million from Property Group Partners on January 12, 2021.
Of those nine items, four were loans above $5 million totaling $179.5 million. The most recent of the four was Rockfeld Group which borrowed $11.8 million from Granite Point Mortgage Trust secured by the 24,000-square-foot, 10-unit office building (O5) on 400 West 14th Street on February 23, 2022.

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