Watermark Capital signs ground lease with Catholic Church in Flushing

By Adam Pincus

Meir David Tabak and Wolfe Landau of the Brooklyn development firm Watermark Capital signed a 49-year lease with St. Michaels Catholic Church for a two-story former convent building at 138-25 Barclay Avenue in Flushing, Queens. The building is 11,952 square feet, and the lease contemplates completed development of no more than a total of 30,000 square feet of residential and community square footage.

The lease describes a rehabilitation of the existing building. “Initial construction shall include a completely renovated, self-sufficient and independent building with self-contained utilities and erected wholly within the boundary lines of the land.”

The lease also notes the building will not exceed 30,000 square feet. “The parties understand and agree that the creation of merged zoning lot and the ZLDA shall prohibit tenant from expanding the improvements on the land to include any floor area development rights other than the contemplated utilized development rights following the completion of the initial construction consisting of thirty thousand (30,000) residential and/or community facility zoning square footage.”

The Watermark entity that executed the lease was Barclay USA LLC. The lease information was disclosed in a petition filed yesterday by the church, asking a New York State Supreme Court judge to approve the lease, a step required by nonprofit entities for major financial transactions. The filing was 724485/2020 in Queens county.

The broker for the deal was CBRE, the lease said. Rent payments starts in the fourth year at $400,000 per year. The lease includes an option to extend to 99 years and a right of first offer to purchase.

The building is currently identified as the “religious eduction office” on a church webpage.