Wafra pays $168M to Brack Capital for conversion opportunity building in Upper West Side

Wafra Inc. through the entity 720 Wea Ventures LLC paid $168 million to Brack Capital Real Estate through the entity Bcre West End Avenue Owner LLC for specialty building at 720 West End Avenue in Upper West Side, Manhattan.
The building is empty and was formerly a senior center for the Salvation Army.
The deal closed on December 22, 2021 and was recorded on January 10, 2022.
The property has 237,507 square feet of built space according to PincusCo analysis of city data. The sale price per built square foot is $707 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.)
Brack bought the property on October 16, 2015, for $108.8 million.
The signatory for Brack Capital Real Estate was Shai Samir.
Prior to this transaction, the buyer Wafra Inc. partnered with Nightingale Properties to buy 111 Wall Street.

Over the past five years, there have been 8 NYC Department of Buildings permit applications filed for this parcel valued at more than $20,000. Of those there was one major renovation application including a certificate of occupancy change (A1) filed with a total estimated value of $21.2 million. There were 7 renovation/alteration projects (A2) applied for with a total estimated value of $614,000. One of the projects were to change the building from a J-2 to a R-2and change the number of residential units from 352 to 117.
The Commercial Observer reports Maurice Suede, Adam Spies, Eric Roth, Adam Doneger, Michael Collins & Tyler Signora of Cushman & Wakefield represented the seller.
In Upper West Side, the majority, or 68 percent of the 95.5 million square feet of built space are residential elevator buildings, with residential walkup buildings next occupying 13 percent of the space. In sales, Upper West Side has the 8th highest sale turnover among other neighborhoods in the city with $1.5 billion in sales volume in the last two years. For development, Upper West Side has 1.9 times the average amount of major developments relative to other neighborhoods and is the 11th highest in Manhattan. It had 1.8 million square feet of commercial construction under development in the last two years, which represents 2 percent of the neighborhood’s built space.
On the tax block, the majority, or 40 percent of the 599,158 square feet of built space are residential elevator buildings, with specialty buildings next occupying 40 percent of the space.
The former owners according to the Department of Housing Preservation and Development includes Shai Shamir, head officer and Doron Resheff, site manager. The business entity was 720 West End Avenue Owner Llc.
Within a 400-foot radius of 720 West End Avenue, PincusCo identified six commercial real estate items of interests occurred over the past 24 months.
Of those six items, two were in new building development. There were one new building permit application and one new building permit. The most recent of these two items was a filing on March 16, 2021 for a 124,591-square-foot R-2 building with 171 residential units at 270 West 96th Street.
Of those six items, three were sales above $5 million totaling $61.4 million. The most recent of the three was Fetner Properties and PGIM Real Estate which bought the 3,750-square-foot, one-unit mixed-use building (K2) on 268 West 96th Street for $16.1 million from Salvation Army on January 3, 2022.
One of those six items was a loan which Lightstone Group borrowed $25.9 million from Aflac secured by the 55,840-square-foot, 65-unit rental (D3) on 700 West End Avenue on October 29, 2021.

Direct link to Acris document. link