Yehuda Kohn pays $3M for likely dev site in Williamsburg

Yehuda Kohn through the entity 489 Grand Holdings LLC paid $3 million to Pedro Ledesma and Orlando Ledesma for the mixed-use building (S1) at 489 Grand Street in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Based on the purchase price, PincusCo considers this a development site purchase.
The deal closed on April 18, 2024 and was recorded on May 13, 2024. The property has 1,942 square feet of built space and 5,547 square feet of additional air rights for a total buildable of 7,497 square feet according to a PincusCo analysis of city data. The sale price per built square foot is $1,544 and the price per buildable square foot is $400 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 Pedro Ledesma and Orlando Ledesma was Orlando Ledesma. The signatory for Yehuda Kohn was Mary T. Dempsey. The contract date was October 10, 2022.

Prior sales and revenue

Prior to this transaction, PincusCo has records that the buyer Yehuda Kohn purchased three properties in three transactions for a total of $6.3 million and has no record it sold any properties over the past 24 months.
The seller Pedro Ledesma had not purchased any other properties and sold one property in one transaction for a total of $1.5 million over the same time period.

The property

The mixed-use building with 1 residential unit in Williamsburg has 1,942 square feet of built space and 5,547 square feet of additional air rights for a total buildable of 7,497 square feet according to a PincusCo analysis of city data. The parcel has frontage of 25 feet and is 100 feet deep with a total lot size of 2,499 square feet. The zoning is M1-2/R6A which allows for up to 2 times floor area ratio (FAR) for manufacturing and up to 3 times FAR for residential with inclusionary housing. The city-designated market value for the property in 2022 is $1.7 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 $600 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 Williamsburg, The bulk, or 39 percent of the 50.4 million square feet of commercial built space are elevator buildings, with walkup buildings next occupying 25 percent of the space. In sales, Williamsburg has the 4th highest sale turnover among other neighborhoods in the city with $2.2 billion in sales volume in the last two years. For development, Williamsburg has 4.1 times the average amount of major developments relative to other neighborhoods and is the 2nd highest in Brooklyn. It had 4.6 million square feet of commercial and multi-family construction under development in the last two years, which represents 9 percent of the neighborhood’s built space. There were two pre-foreclosure suit filed among other mixed-use buildings in the past 12 months.

The block

On this tax block, PincusCo has identified the owners of 13 of the 28 commercial properties representing 137,605 square feet of the 178,086 square feet. The largest owner is Thangamani Seenivasan, followed by Shaindy Schwartz and then Redzep Djokic.
On the tax block, there was one new building construction project filed totaling 6,352 square feet. It is a five-unit, 6,352 square-foot residential (R-2) building submitted by David Ruff with plans filed October 7, 2014 and it has not been permitted yet.

The majority, or 50 percent of the 178,086 square feet of built space are elevator buildings, with mixed-use buildings next occupying 32 percent of the space.

The buyer

The PincusCo database currently indicates that Yehuda Kohn owned at least 12 commercial properties with 115 residential units in New York City with 53,393 square feet and a city-determined market value of $13.8 million. (Market value is typically about 50% of actual value.) Within the portfolio, the bulk, or 78 percent of the 53,393 square feet of built space are walkup properties, with mixed-use properties next occupying 7 percent of the space. The bulk, or 97 percent of the built space, is in Brooklyn, with Bronx next at 3 percent of the space.

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