Weihong Hu pays $4.1M for commercial in Garment District, owns hotel development on tax block

Weihong Hu through the entity H Hotel LLC paid $4.1 million to Bo Chrun Hin through the entity Cobel Inc. for the retail and office building (O5) at 55 West 38th Street in the Garment District, Manhattan. Hu owns another property on the tax block, but they are not adjacent.
The deal closed on June 5, 2024 and was recorded on June 12, 2024. The property has 6,000 square feet of built space and 10,795 square feet of additional air rights for a total buildable of 16,790 square feet according to a PincusCo analysis of city data. The sale price per built square foot is $683 and the price per buildable square foot is $244 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 signatory for Bo Chrun Hin was Bo Chrun Hin. The signatory for Weihong Hu was Weihong Hu. The contract date was July 28, 2023.
Weihong Hu also owns 58-60 West 39th Street, a hotel project on a parcel which Hu purchased for $25.15 million in 2016.

Prior sales and revenue

Prior to this transaction, PincusCo has no record that the buyer Weihong Hu had purchased any other properties and has no record it sold any properties over the past 24 months.
The seller Bo Chrun Hin had not purchased any other properties and had not sold any properties over the same time period.

The property

The retail building in Garment District has 6,000 square feet of built space and 10,795 square feet of additional air rights for a total buildable of 16,790 square feet according to a PincusCo analysis of city data. The parcel has frontage of 17 feet and is 98 feet deep with a total lot size of 1,679 square feet. The zoning is M1-6 which allows for up to 10 times floor area ratio (FAR) for manufacturing. The city-designated market value for the property in 2022 is $1.2 million.

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 $440 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 Garment District, The majority, or 69 percent of the 51.8 million square feet of commercial built space are office buildings, with hotel buildings next occupying 12 percent of the space. In sales, Garment District has 1.8 times the average sales volume among other neighborhoods with $483.2 million in sales volume in the last two years and is the 18th highest in Manhattan. For development, Garment District is the 5th most active neighborhood among other neighborhoods. It had 6.8 million square feet of commercial and multi-family construction under development in the last two years, which represents 13 percent of the neighborhood’s built space.

The block

On this tax block, PincusCo has identified the owners of 12 of the 27 commercial properties representing 1,266,171 square feet of the 1,903,078 square feet. The largest owner is Weihong Hu, followed by R&B Realty Group and then Michael Besen.
On the tax block, there were two new building construction projects totaling 73,220 square feet. The largest is a 173-unit, 62,062 square-foot hotel/dormitory/shelter (R-1) building submitted by Wei Hong Hu and filed by Wei Hong Hu with plans filed April 20, 2018 and permitted July 24, 2018. The second largest is a 299-unit, 11,158 square-foot hotel/dormitory/shelter (R-1) building submitted by Alan Reich with plans filed December 30, 2016 and permitted January 4, 2019.

The majority, or 70 percent of the 1.9 million square feet of built space are office buildings, with hotel buildings next occupying 23 percent of the space.

The buyer

The PincusCo database currently indicates that Weihong Hu owned at least five commercial properties with 44 residential units in New York City with 335,888 square feet and a city-determined market value of $72.3 million. (Market value is typically about 50% of actual value.) The portfolio has $103.9 million in debt, borrowed from Shanghai Commercial Bank. Within the portfolio, all identified are hotel properties. The bulk, or 72 percent of the built space, is in Manhattan, with Queens next at 28 percent of the space.

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