The pool of prospective buyers for two parcels that are part of the massive Riverside Center development has been whittled down to a handful of deep-pocketed investment trusts and locals like Related Cos.
Potential buyers will be allowed to place second-round bids on two parcels that can be developed into 1.35 million square feet of mostly residential along West End Avenue between West 59th and 61st Streets.
The planned apartment buildings, known as No. 2 and No. 5, will be constructed as part of the mega-project being developed by Gary Barnett’s Extell Development and the Carlyle Group. The Riverside Center site comprises the southernmost portion of Riverside South.
Sources tell us best and final offers are due at the end of January to investment broker Andrew Scandalios at HFF, who didn’t return calls for comment.
Barnett and Carlyle are selling the two parcels so that they can concentrate on three more lavish condo towers planned for sites closer to the Hudson River, sources said.
The sale ensures that meeting the city’s affordable-housing requirement — along with a number of other community-space requirements — will fall to the buyer of the two parcels.
The two buildings will include garages that need to supply both bike racks and car-charging stations, as well as retail space that has been rezoned to include car sales as a continuation of the Eleventh Avenue auto strip.
We slogged through 559 pages of restrictive declarations (what we did on our winter vacation) to learn that a public school is slated for the 43-story No. 2 building and that day care for 45 children or more may be required somewhere in about 10,000 square feet.
Also, the 44-story building No. 5 can’t get a certificate of occupancy until Con Edison converts a turbine at the nearby power plant to natural gas, which sources said will be done this year.
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Joe Sitt’s Thor Equities has now closed on its 75-percent stake in a Meatpacking District venture with Taconic Partners and Square Mile Capital to develop the atrium-topped project at 837 Washington St. designed by Morris Adjmi. The site is opposite the Standard Hotel and next to the High Line.
The off-market deal that we told you about last year was arranged by brokers Ivan Hakimian and Kevin Esh of HPNY.
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Priceline just expanded by 6,411 square feet at 100 William St. to a total of 18,094 feet in the building. Richard Levine of CBRE represented the tenant in the 6.5-year deal, while the CBRE team of Scott Sloves, Jonathan Cope, Mark Ravesloot and Rob Wizenberg represented building owner Mitsui Fudosan.
This CBRE team also represented the ownership as Odyssey Re Holding Corp. signed a new 15-year lease for 41,854 square feet, which had an asking rent of $36 per foot. Odyssey now has more room to grow in the new space on the entire fourth and fifth floors, as well as future expansion options.
“The search was focused on a central location on two full lower floors, which was just a preference,” said Hal Stein, who represented the tenant along with Newmark Knight Frank colleagues Neil Goldmacher and Todd Stracci.
But Odyssey will lose its now fabulous harbor views after it relocates from three tower floors of about 15,000 square feet apiece at my favorite building and the Jewel of Downtown, 17 State St., which brokers tell us has taking rents in the $50s per foot range.
“The floors will become available in the middle of this year, and based on the activity level, we are starting discussions,” said Steve Morrows of RFR Realty, which owns and leases the curved-glass property. Morrows declined to discuss rents but noted the vacancy rate is extremely low and renovation work has been completed.
“We polished up the trophy with work on the plaza and created high-end pre-builts with new common corridors,” said Morrows.
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In the final month of 2011, Crown Acquisitions spent $20 million on three off-market sites in Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island, cutting deals with national retailers for each of the properties.
“We are always in the market for these deals,” said Ike Chera, a principal in the family firm.
In Greenpoint, they bought the two-story, 10,000-square-foot 765 Manhattan Ave. for $3.5 million and signed TD Bank to take 4,000 square feet through Richard Senior of Ripco Real Estate.
A 12,000-square-foot building at 37-80 Junction Blvd. in Corona was purchased for $10 million vacant and then entirely leased to Duane Reade through Jeff Winick of Winick Realty.
The former Blockbuster store at 3881 Richmond Ave. in Heartland Village Staten Island is being combined with the adjacent corner lot and developed into a 4,000-square-foot building that was leased to Bank of America, which was represented by CBRE.
