United Construction & Development signs $25M refi with New Era Life for dev site in Flushing

United Construction & Development Group through the entity New Janet De, LLC as borrower signed a refi loan with lender New Era Life Insurance Company through the entity New Era Life Insurance Company valued at $25 million for the development building (V1) at 131-01 Roosevelt Avenue in Flushing, Queens.
The deal closed on December 3, 2024 and was recorded on December 26, 2024. The prior lender was Bank Hapoalim which held debt that had an original loan amount of $25 million.The property has zero square feet of built space and 214,928 square feet of additional air rights for a total buildable of 214,928 square feet according to a PincusCo analysis of city data. The loan price per buildable square foot is $116 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 owner bought the property on December 2, 2016, for $64.9 million. The signatory for United Construction & Development Group was Jiashu Xu.

The property

The parcel has frontage of 313 feet and is 261 feet deep with a total lot size of 88,448 square feet. The lot is irregular. The zoning is C4-2 which allows for up to 3.4 times floor area ratio (FAR) for commercial and up to 2.43 times FAR for residential. The city-designated market value for the property in 2022 is $15.3 million. The most recent loan totaled $25 million and was provided by Bank Hapoalim on May 4, 2020.

Violations and lawsuits

There were no lawsuits or bankruptcies filed against the property for the past 24 months. 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 $1 million on this tax lot.

The neighborhood

In Flushing, The bulk, or 45 percent of the 37.7 million square feet of commercial built space are elevator buildings, with specialty buildings next occupying 20 percent of the space. In sales, Flushing has 2.9 times the average sales volume among other neighborhoods with $751.6 million in sales volume in the last two years and is the 2nd highest in Queens. For development, Flushing has 1.6 times the average amount of major developments relative to other neighborhoods and is the 3rd highest in Queens. It had 1.8 million square feet of commercial and multi-family construction under development in the last two years, which represents 5 percent of the neighborhood’s built space.

The block

On this tax block, PincusCo has identified the owners of five of the 12 commercial properties representing 2,800 square feet of the 142,915 square feet. The two identified owners are United Construction & Development Group and F&T Group.
On the tax block, there were four new building construction projects totaling 1,140,089 square feet. The largest is a 368-unit, 664,279 square-foot residential (R-2) building submitted by Young Nian Group and filed by John Liang with plans filed November 12, 2019 and it has not been permitted yet. The second largest is a 141-unit, 227,808 square-foot residential (R-2) building submitted by United Construction & Development Group and filed by Jiashu Xu with plans filed May 13, 2022 and it has not been permitted yet.

The majority, or 89 percent of the 142,915 square feet of built space are industrial buildings, with mixed-use buildings next occupying 9 percent of the space.

The borrower

The PincusCo database currently indicates that United Construction & Development Group owned at least 21 commercial properties with 388 residential units in New York City with 1,277,240 square feet and a city-determined market value of $139.3 million. (Market value is typically about 50% of actual value.) The portfolio has $691.9 million in debt, with top three lenders as Bank of China, Centennial Bank, and State Bank of Texas respectively. Within the portfolio, the bulk, or 33 percent of the 1,277,240 square feet of built space are O8 properties, with elevator properties next occupying 24 percent of the space. The bulk, or 94 percent of the built space, is in Queens, with Brooklyn next at 6 percent of the space.

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