Eric Hadar has signed a contract to buy the Brill Building at 1619 Broadway for $185 million.
The sellers are Ofer Yardeni and Joel Seiden’s Stonehenge Partners, along with Invesco of Texas.
Hadar and Abraham Merchant and Richard Cohn of Merchants Property Group, signed a contract to buy the building last week, sources said.
The direct deal is being completed with investment brokers Douglas Harmon and Adam Spies of Eastdil Secured and may have begun as a retail play.
Sources said the group intends to bring the 175,000-square-foot building back to its roots with pre-builts targeting budding music and entertainment companies. Colony Records recently vacated the retail portion of the building; with a spread from the basement to the third floor of more than 45,000 square feet, it could be the most valuable portion of the asset.
In its 1950s and ’60s heyday, the building’s offices were filled with agents, publishers and rehearsal studios.
Singer-songwriter Paul Simon still maintains his office there.
No one could be reached for comment at press time.
Once an active investor, Hadar previously owned both the Citigroup Building and the LVMH Building at 57th Street and Fifth Avenue.
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A downtown dorm currently used by Pace University is on the market through Jimmy Kuhn, David Colen and Lawrence “Chip” Porter at Newmark Grubb Knight Frank. The former office building at 55 John St., and its income stream, could bring in $90 million for seller Yitzchak Tessler.
The dorm is entirely leased to Educational Housing Services, which has an agreement to provide Pace with 285 fully furnished dorm rooms. Not like the dorm rooms you lived in years ago, these all have flat-panel TVs with built-in game consoles, small desks, captain’s beds and full-size refrigerators.
There is also a small H&R Block office on the ground floor for when the students graduate and finally earn some dough to pay back their loans.
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We just got a first look at the Real Estate Board of New York’s nominations for the most ingenious sales, leasing and financing deals of the year.
We’ll be reviewing the deals in more detail in The Post’s March 5 commercial real-estate special, and the coveted “Oscars” of the industry will be awarded on April 23.
The deals include: the sale of CUNY’s 20 East End Ave. and relocation to a tax-exempt office condo, submitted by Studley’s Ira Schuman, Daniel O. Horowitz and David Carlos; the sale of 88 Leonard St. by brokers Helen Hwang and Nat Rockett of Cushman & Wakefield; the purchase of a condominium by Y&R at 3 Columbus Circle by CBRE’s Mary Ann Tighe and Gregory Tosko; a flea market-to-flagship sale of 144 Spring Street by broker Christopher Owles of Sinvin Realty; the sale of 525 Broadway back to its original owner by ABS Partners Real Estate brokers Alan S. Cohen and Gregg L. Schenker.
Leases include: the pact for the New York Genome Center at 101 Ave. of the Americas by Bill Harvey of Newmark Grubb Knight Frank and Daniel Segal, now with Orchard Real Estate Partners; Chadbourne & Parke’s lease at 1301 Ave. of the Americas by Moshe Sukenik, Barry Gosin and Chris Mongeluzo of Newmark; leases at 11 Times Square by Jones Lang LaSalle’s Mitchell Konsker, Paul Glickman and Matthew Astrachan; the lease of newly built 33 Beekman St. by Pace University through Newmark’s David A. Falk and Kyle J. Ciminelli; the Havas lease in Hudson Square by the Newmark team of David A. Falk, Jason T. Greenstein and Frank Kajon; the Viacom renewal at 1515 Broadway by the CBRE team of Michael R. Laginestra, Scott L. Gottlieb and Andrew J. Sussman; and a lease for Times Square Capital at 7 Times Square from CBRE team Ben Friedland and Silvio Petriello.
Both sides of Morgan Stanley’s 1.2 million-square-foot lease at One New York Plaza were nominated. The tenant’s team was Barry M. Gosin, Brian S. Waterman and Romel Canete of Newmark, while the Brookfield Office Properties’ agent was Duncan McCuaig.
Finance entries included the financing for 837 Washington St. through HFF’s Evan Pariser; 50 Oceana Drive West in Brighton Beach by The Singer & Bassuk Organization’s Scott A. Singer and Jeffrey Moroch; 1515 Broadway by HFF’s team of Whitney Wilcox and Michael Tepedino; HSBC Tower’s refinancing by the Ackman-Ziff Real Estate Group’s Shawn Rosenthal; and 542-580 Second Ave. through NY Urban’s Chris Lama.
