Webster Apartments pays $42.2M to Lam Generation for hotel in Downtown Brooklyn

The nonprofit Webster Apartments paid $42.2 million to Lam Generation through the entity A&J Lee Duffield III LLC for the hotel building (H2) at 229 Duffield Street in Downtown Brooklyn.
The deal closed on May 24, 2023 and was recorded on June 6, 2023. The property has 56,626 square feet of built space according to a PincusCo analysis of city data. The sale price per built square foot is $745 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 seller bought the property on June 8, 2012, for $31.1 million. The signatory for Lam Generation was Kin Chung Lam, Jeffrey W. Lam, Cindy Luk, Keith Lam, Shuet Chun Lam, and Loann Lee. The signatory for Webster Apartments was Roy J. Bernstein. Webster Apartments is a nonprofit housing company. Roy J. Bernstein is president.

Prior sales and revenue

Prior to this transaction, PincusCo has no record that the buyer Webster Apartments had purchased any other properties and sold two properties in one transaction for a total of $52.5 million over the past 24 months.
The seller Lam Generation had not purchased any other properties and had not sold any properties over the same time period. The former owners according to the Department of Housing Preservation and Development includes Kin Chung Lam, head officer and Ray Mannon, site manager. The business entity is Duffield 229 Management Inc.

The property

The hotel building in Downtown Brooklyn has 56,626 square feet of built space according to a PincusCo analysis of city data. The parcel has frontage of 43 feet and is 100 feet deep with a total lot size of 4,344 square feet. The zoning is C6-4.5 which allows for up to 12 times floor area ratio (FAR) for commercial The city-designated market value for the property in 2022 is $13.2 million. The most recent loan totaled $27 million and was provided by Flushing Bank on September 25, 2019.

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 received two DOB violations, $625 in ECB penalties, one housing violation, and $12,110 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 $1 million on this tax lot.

The neighborhood

In Downtown Brooklyn, The bulk, or 40 percent of the 22.4 million square feet of commercial built space are office buildings, with elevator buildings next occupying 24 percent of the space. In sales, Downtown Brooklyn has 3.6 times the average sales volume among other neighborhoods with $1.3 billion in sales volume in the last two years and is the 2nd highest in Brooklyn. For development, Downtown Brooklyn has 3.7 times the average amount of major developments relative to other neighborhoods and is the 4th highest in Brooklyn. It had 3.7 million square feet of commercial and multi-family construction under development in the last two years, which represents 17 percent of the neighborhood’s built space. There was one pre-foreclosure suit filed among other hotel buildings in the past 12 months.

The block

On this tax block, PincusCo has identified the owners of three of the seven commercial properties representing 262,607 square feet of the 684,181 square feet. The largest owner is Lam Group, followed by Daniel Gazal and then Allied Property Group.
On the tax block, there were five new building construction projects totaling 731,724 square feet. The largest is a 387,801 square-foot business (B) building submitted by JEMB Realty and filed by Morris Jerome with plans filed September 20, 2017 and permitted February 13, 2018. The second largest is a 248-unit, 232,375 square-foot residential (R-2) building submitted by JEMB Realty and filed by Morris Bailey with plans filed September 25, 2014 and it has not been permitted yet.

The majority, or 58 percent of the 684,181 square feet of built space are office buildings, with retail buildings next occupying 20 percent of the space.

The seller

The PincusCo database currently indicates that Lam Generation owned at least five commercial properties in New York City with 304,972 square feet and a city-determined market value of $91.5 million. (Market value is typically about 50% of actual value.) The portfolio has $67.2 million in debt, with top three lenders as Investors Bank, East West Bank, and Shanghai Commercial Bank respectively. Within the portfolio, the bulk, or 84 percent of the 304,972 square feet of built space are hotel properties, with retail properties next occupying 14 percent of the space. The bulk, or 98 percent of the built space, is in Manhattan, with Queens next at 2 percent of the space.

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