Verizon signs ground lease valued at $50M with Edison for office building in Hell’s Kitchen

Verizon through the entity Verizon New York Inc. signed a 49-year ground lease as tenant valued at $50 million with landlord Edison Properties through the entity Hlp Properties, Lp for the office building at 620 12th Avenue in Hell’s Kitchen, Manhattan.
The deal closed on June 14, 2022 and was recorded on June 28, 2022. The property has 102,800 square feet of built space and 7,974 square feet of additional air rights for a total buildable of 110,750 square feet according to PincusCo analysis of city data. The sale price per built square foot is $486 and the price per buildable square foot is $451 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 ground lessor, Edison Properties, bought the property on October 26, 2015, for $55 million. The signatory for Edison Properties was Jon Dario. The signatory for Verizon was Noah A. Julius. Jon Dario is the CEO of Edison Properties. This is a 49-year ground lease with the initial term of 21 years that began on June 14, 2022. Verizon has a right of first refusal to buy the property.

Prior sales and revenue

Prior to this transaction, PincusCo has records that the ground lessor Verizon purchased one properties in one transactions for a total of $74.7 million and has no record it sold any properties over the past 24 months.
The seller Edison Properties had not purchased any other properties and sold 22 properties in 19 transactions for a total of $3.2 billion over the same time period. The 102,800-square-foot property generated revenue of $4.3 million or $42 per square foot, according to the most recent income and expense figures.

The property

The 620 12th Avenue parcel has frontage of 200 feet and is 116 feet deep with a total lot size of 22,150 square feet. The lot is irregular. The zoning is M2-4 which allows for up to 5 times floor area ratio (FAR) for manufacturing The city-designated market value for the property in 2022 is $15.5 million.

Violations and lawsuits

There were no lawsuits or bankruptcies filed against the property since September of 2020. In addition, according to city public data, the property has received $625 in ECB penalties and $625 in OATH penalties in the last year.

Development

There are no active new building construction projects or major alteration projects with initial costs more than $5 million on this tax lot.

The neighborhood

In Hell’s Kitchen, the bulk, or 39 percent of the 45 million square feet of commercial built space are residential elevator buildings, with specialty buildings next occupying 17 percent of the space. In sales, Hell’s Kitchen has 3.5 times the average sales volume among other neighborhoods with $972.1 million in sales volume in the last two years and is the 13th highest in Manhattan. For development, Hell’s Kitchen has 1.3 times the average amount of major developments relative to other neighborhoods and is the 18th highest in Manhattan. It had 1.2 million 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 two of the eight commercial properties representing 256,163 square feet of the 416,264 square feet. The two identified owners are Brookfield Properties and Edison Properties. There are three active new building construction projects totaling 86,182 square feet. The largest is a 37,620-square-foot F-1 building developed by Gary Flom with plans filed April 27, 2015 and it has not been permitted yet. The second largest is a 36,082-square-foot S-1 building developed by Stephen Mcbride with plans filed May 19, 2017 and permitted June 17, 2019.

The majority, or 36 percent of the 421,184 square feet of built space are hotel buildings, with industrial buildings next occupying 36 percent of the space.

Surrounding

Within a 400-foot radius of 620 12th Avenue, PincusCo identified four commercial real estate items of interests occurred over the past 24 months.
One of those four items was a sale which Prince Lumber bought the 19,100-square-foot, one-unit industrial (E1) on 610 West 47th Street and four other properties for $7.3 million from 611 WEST 46 LLC on January 7, 2022.
Of those four items, three were loans above $5 million totaling $30.5 million. The most recent of the three was Bram Auto Group which borrowed $10.5 million from Toyota Motor Credit Corporation secured by one condo unit in the 44,106-square-foot, two-unit industrial (RW) on 660 Joe Dimaggio Highway and one other property on February 14, 2022.

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