UNIQLO pays $355M for condo, signs $95M ground lease, at 660 Fifth

Fast fashion retailer, UNIQLO Co. through the entity UNIQLO USA LLC paid $355 million to Vornado Realty Trust through the entity Green Acres 666 Fifth Retail Eat Tic Owner LLC for a 17,295-square-foot retail condominium unit at 660 Fifth Avenue in Midtown West, Manhattan. The expected use is owner-occupied.

Since 2011, UNIQLO has owned another retail condominium unit in the building, which has long been known by the address 666 Fifth Avenue, that it purchased for $311.66 million. And simultaneously with the new condo purchase, UNIQLO signed an 87-year sub ground lease for another space, a 76,880-square-foot office condo in the building, with the transaction valued at $95 million.
Vornado disclosed the sale in a press release indicating the sale price was $350 million.
The deals closed on January 8, 2025 and the ground lease was recorded on January 15, 2025 and the condo sale was recorded on January 17, 2025. The condo unit 1104 has 17,295 square feet of built space according to a PincusCo analysis of city data. The sale price per built square foot is $20,526 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 signatory for Vornado Realty Trust was Steven Borenstein. The signatory for UNIQLO Co. was Daisuke Tsukagoshi. The contract date was August 2, 2024. The amended condo filing shows the two new commercial units 1104 and 1105 and the resized unit 1103 and 1102. Uniqlo paid $331 million for the 36,473-square foot unit 1101. At the same time, a portion of the main office unit was carved out to create the 76,880-square-foot office unit 1105, which resulted in the reduction in size of the main office unit 1102 from 1.169 million square feet to 1.096 million square feet. And the retail unit 1103, was divided, with its original space of 40,724 reduced to 23,411 square feet, and the new unit 1104 with 17,295 square feet was created. At the same time, Brookfield Properties, which is the ground lease tenant at the unit 1105 with landlord Kushner Companies, signed an 87-unit ground lease with Uniqlo as tenant and Brookfield as sub ground lease landlord.

Prior sales and revenue

Prior to this transaction, PincusCo has no record that the buyer UNIQLO Co. had purchased any other properties and has no record it sold any properties over the past 24 months.
The seller Vornado Realty Trust purchased five properties in three transactions for a total of $169.6 million and sold 12 properties in six transactions for a total of $211.1 million over the same time period.

The seller

The PincusCo database currently indicates that Vornado Realty Trust owned at least 55 commercial properties with four residential units in New York City with 15,490,385 square feet and a city-determined market value of $7 billion. (Market value is typically about 50% of actual value.) The portfolio has $6.3 billion in debt, with top three lenders as JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, and ING Capital respectively. Within the portfolio, the bulk, or 78 percent of the 15,490,385 square feet of built space are office properties, with retail properties next occupying 12 percent of the space. The bulk, or 97 percent of the built space, is in Manhattan, with Bronx next at 3 percent of the space.

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