A Vornado of activity
New York & Co. move part of Penn Plaza surge
WOMEN’S apparel retailer New York & Co. signed a new lease and will move its headquarters to nearly 180,000 square feet in the Vornado Realty Trust building at 330 W. 34th St., The Post first reported on its website Tuesday.
The realestate investment trust said a deal for the space had been signed Feb. 24 during its conference call, but did not disclose the tenant.
Sources later confirmed it is the 500store apparel chain.
The fashion company has been based at nearby 450 W. 33rd St. for more than 20 years, since it was known as the Lerner Shops.
New York & Co. is now expected to move to the Vornado building by the end of 2014 after working out an agreement with the current building owner, Brookfield Properties, to leave six months early.
The retailer is taking the 6th through 9th floors that range in size from 43,100 to 45,650 square feet, along with another 5,000 squarefoot space at a rent in the $50s per square foot, sources said.
The retailer is known for seasonal trends at value pricing with trendy collections, including one by the actress Eva Mendes.
Lerner Shops was founded in 1918 by Harold M. Lane and Samuel Lerner, the uncle of Alan Jay Lerner, the lyricist.
Vornado is completing a full renovation of the building as part of its efforts to upgrade its entire Penn Plaza portfolio. Because of the interest in Midtown South and the Hudson Yards, “Everything is tilting toward the Penn Plaza District,” Chief Executive
Steve Roth said on the
call.
Vornado also is renovating the Hotel Pennsylvania, which Roth called “the single most important focus of our portfolio,” disclosing efforts to upgrade its lobby, restaurants and nightlife.
New York & Co. was represented by a CBRE team of Steve Siegel, Ken Meyerson, Lauren Crowley Corrinet and Brendan Herlihy, along with independent consultants Do
ane Kelly and David Fleisher of KLG Advisors and Alan R. Grossman of ARG Realty Consultants.
Vornado was represented inhouse by Craig Pan-zirer and Jared Silverman.
The prestigious Harlem Academy will have an entirely new building designed by Rafael Vinoly on 20,000 square feet of vacant land it just purchased at 655 St. Nicholas Ave. for $9.5 million.
The school for high achievers intends to consolidate current sites at Fifth Avenue and 111th Street to develop a new school of 50,000 to 80,000 square feet.
The design is still being tweaked with its board member, architect Jay
Bargmann of Vinoly, as the goal is to also have adjacent outdoor play areas.
The new building will let the school triple the number of students from 120 to 360 in grades K8. Along with classrooms it will include a regulation gym, science labs, a cafeteria and performance hall.
Paul Wolf and Stephen Powers of Denham Wolf, who focus on nonprofits, led the 18month search. They used GIS mapping to find large parcels and then sifted through more than 100 to find this offmarket gem.
“They wanted to have a real campus,” said Powers. The deal was a flip by
Mark Caller of The Marcal Group, who paid $5.5 million to the $4.4 million mortgage holder after it foreclosed when the garage owner filed for bankruptcy.
Powers said Caller tore down the vacant garage, conducted a complete environmental remediation and shored up the retaining wall holding up the adjacent Hamilton Terrace apartment buildings above, leaving it ready for development.
The school’s average tuition is $2,000 per year. and it has been fund raising and gathering pledges to pay for the project, which used a $7.6 million bridge loan.
There are also expected to be a lot of synergies with the adjacent afterschool programs at the Harlem School of the Arts when the Academy opens in about two years.
The purchase price would have been twice the amount if sold for housing use, the brokers said.
Mayor de Blasio may not yet fully understand the city’s assessed value (AV) issues, as he has proposed raising the AV on vacant sites to force developers to build faster.
The billable AV for the garage rose dramatically from $130,000 in 2000 for taxes of $13,000 per year, to an AV of $1,144,260 in 2008, making taxes $115,100 (and always paid late).
The AV was down to $679,097 for the 201314 tax year, so the Academy owes $36,747 for the quarter starting April 1. Some day, exemption paperwork will zero out its future bills.
The tentative billable AV starting July 1 will be $349,740, for yearly taxes of roughly $70,000. The Academy also owes $18.71 in back taxes on a 2.42 square foot by 119.5 square footlong second parcel. Welcome to the wacky world off city tax assessment.
This site has also been on and off city lien sales since 1976 because the garage owners could not afford the taxes, its mortgage was foreclosed, and there was little demand for sites this size restricted to community use.
“It made it a very tricky property,” said Powers.
Johnson Controls is expanding and moving from the 41st floor of 12,000 square feet to the entire 17,000 squarefoot 29th floor of 60 E. 42nd St.
Thomas Pulie of USI Real Estate Brokerage Services represented JCI, while William Cohen and
Julie Christiano of Newmark Grubb Knight Frank and Ryan Kass, now inhouse with the Empire State Realty Trust ownership. The asking rent was $52.50 per square foot.
JCI has also done extensive work on the ESRTowned Empire State Building’s energy renovations.
Monday, a state Appellate Court ruled against partnership interests that were bought out to create the realestate investment trust that now owns both buildings.