Aerie has nest
Popular American Eagle brand lands in Soho, so...
AMERICAN Eagle-owned Aerie has signed a 6,500 square-foot lease at 75 Spring St. on the northeast corner of Crosby.
It is currently in the process of unwinding a smaller, short-term stay across the street, at 72 Spring. That space was previously occupied by C Wonder and is expected to house a new Amazon books next.
Other nearby tenants include Balthazar and Starbucks
Aerie, a lingerie and apparel store beloved by its customers, will have 5,000 feet on the ground floor and 1,500 feet on a lower level of the nine-story brick building that has a huge 145 feet of wraparound frontage. It was the home of Sur la Table for a dozen years.
Aerie was represented by Steve Asch of City Connections. RKF’s Karen Bellantoni,
Joshua Strauss and Jackie Totolo represented the ownership, Greystone Realty. The asking rent was not disclosed, but Soho rents have dropped dramatically over the last year. with the most expensive strip on Broadway down to an average of $644 per square foot last fall, according to the Real Estate Board of New York.
“Aerie has a great price point and a great customer base and are a very relevant brand — even more so with the new campaign,” said Bellantoni.
That “Real Role Models” advertising campaign features women comfy in their own skin with unretouched photos of Olympic gold medal gymnast Aly Rais
man, the “Fight Song” singer Rachel Platten, activist Yara Shahidi and model Iskra Lawrence in their Aerie undies.
Raisman also showed her strength when she recently testified at the gym team doctor’s sexual abuse trial.
A huge vacant housing site of 274,600 square feet in Staten Island is being foreclosed for owing a mere $2,445 — and the City even thinks it’s worth $14 million.
But to view it you need a snorkel, as the land is completely under water.
Yes, the city has plenty of vacant “lots,” but it doesn’t mean they are all ready for cement trucks.
The parcel in foreclosure is off New Dorp Beach in an old “resort” area once filled with bathers, bungalows and long piers — dubbed the “Poor Man’s Bermuda.”
Now it is part of Great Kills Park.
Much of what is now the park was condemned to make way for Shore Front Drive — a brainchild of Robert Moses that was eventually deep-sixed.
On Google maps, look for Center Place and Cedar Grove Avenue, which runs alongside Cpl. Allan E. Kivlehan Park, a scrubland crisscrossed with trails and a children’s playground.
Marked as “irregular” by city assessors, with an address of “Neutral Avenue,” it is 183 feet wide (roughly between Center and Marine Way) but has 1,501 feet running from a point off the sandy beach out among the fishes.
Maybe that’s what’s “irregular.”
The city has no clue to the ownership and deems it a “bad address” — guess the postman can’t even ring its bell. But this Class One property was just assessed with a tentative market value of $14.01 million — up $2.9 million over last year.
The parcel likely held one of the old piers that hasn’t been around in decades.
Being somewhat realistic, the Finance Dept. counts this Class 1b property with a tentative market value of $55,850 and an assessed value of $3,351 — dutifully boosted by the allowed 6 percent per year, or $188. The tax bill would be $645 starting in July.
In 1979, $87.50 was paid, but by 1995, the parcel owed over $500 and was later added to a lien sale.
That 1998 tax lien is now being foreclosed through a published notice to an entity “Cedar Associates” — perhaps named after part of the beach — and John Does, just filed by lawyer Thomas P. Malone, who represents the tax lien trust and Bank of New York Mellon.
They uncovered the City deed from 1957 when a copartnership — some were lawyers and others involved in the ritzy Apthorp in Man- hattan — bought it with prior owner, Elja Lurje, subject to two mortgages totaling $28,400. The deed leaves out his two acres of real land — now part of the park — and notes the rest is “under water.”
We can only imagine that the savvy investment group figured with the Robert Moses condemnations underway, they could come out ahead.
Broker Bob Knakal, chairman of NYC investment sales at Cushman & Wakefield, had never seen parcels like this. “I’ve seen partially under water,” he said. “There is not much you can do. The City won’t let you build on it, and you can’t get flood insurance because it’s already flooded.”