In the midst of the holiday bustle, Famous Dave’s BBQ has opened a second location — in Times Square at 234 W. 42nd St.
The new 600-seat restaurant takes up the entire 25,000-square-foot landmarked former Liberty Box Theater, which is part of Forest City’s 42nd St. Entertainment Center retail project.
Famous Dave’s can accommodate up to 1,500 people for parties, when not everyone is seated.
This is the first tenant for the theater since it became part of the redevelopment of Times Square, and it can be found near Madame Tussauds and the eateries Dave & Busters and Applebee’s.
Negotiations for the space, with a blended asking rent of $200 a square foot started in 2007 when Famous Dave’s had already opened a spread on West 47th Street. The pact was finally struck in 2009, but it took all this time to open due to the painstaking historic installation and various required permissions.
“It was the longest deal you could ever imagine, because it was a net-lease with both Forest City and the 42nd Street Redevelopment Corp., which is run by the state,” said Andrew A. Pittel of his eponymous company, which represented the Benmoha Restaurant Group in the deal. “Every ‘i’ had to be looked at and every ‘t’ had to be crossed, and they had to hire certain architects and engineers because it was under the jurisdiction of Landmarks.”
Marc Leber and Jeffrey Roseman of Newmark Knight Frank worked on the deal for Forest City.
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Rockbridge Capital has bought the Hampton Inn at 59 W. 35th St. without brokers from Magna Hospitality for $69.5 million. This comes to roughly $476,027 per key for the 146-room hotel, which is in line with other city hotel sales.
According to Alan Assaf, investment manager for Rockbridge, the companies have a “prior relationship” and Magna will continue to operate the hotel.
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Crown Acquisition, the Carlyle Group and Highgate Holdings have closed on their purchase of the old office building at 170 Broadway near the World Trade Center for $55 million — thanks to a $35 million mortgage from M&T Bank.
The group intends to redevelop the building into a hotel with retail space.
The seller, Troy Baydala of AMG Realty, bought it from a Greek family in 1998 for about $6.4 million.
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Liz Claiborne has renewed a lease for 67,000 square feet encompassing the entire third and fourth floors of 1440 Broadway for its Juicy Couture and Lucky Jeans divisions.
David Falk and Jason Greenstein of Newmark Knight Frank represented the New York apparel giant while Jordan Berger negotiated in-house on behalf of building owner Monday Properties, which had an asking rent in the mid-$50s a square foot.
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Along with the parking garage on E. 50th Street that The Post’s Steve Cuozzo reported Extell Development bought last month, the wily Gary Barnett also bought the skinny, 18 foot by 100 foot parcel that backs up to it at 141 E. 49th St. for $9,569,597, thus providing a loading dock, back entrance, porte cochere, or just more bulk for the new project coming on the garage site.
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The Little Gym, which has 300 locations nationwide including one on the Upper West Side, has leased an 8,000 square foot space at 207 E. 94th St. that will open for the start of school in the fall.
The space is being converted from a high-ceilinged loading dock and parking garage in an office building owned by Glenwood Management.
Andrew A. Pittel and Peter Andrew Winston of Andrew A. Pittel & Company represented The Little Gym, while Jamison Weiner of The Manhattes Group repped Glenwood Management. It had an asking rent of $100 a foot.
