China’s Record-Setting Flatiron Play

Cheerland Investments’ $128M acquisition of the 93k SF 287 Park Ave S was the highest price/SF ($1,372 to be exact) that NGKF’s Geoffrey Newman has seen for an office-to-resi conversion. Geoffrey (second from right with brothers Anthony and Matthew and father Anthony Sr. after a helicopter tour of California’s Channel Islands National Park) repped the seller with colleagues Mark Weiss and Brian Fennelly and NGKF Capital Markets' David Noonan, Jennifer Schwartzman, and Jimmy Kuhn.

We snapped the building yesterday. Geoffrey tells us he started talking to the three charities that owned it (Community Service Society, Children’s Aid Society, and NYC Mission Society) while he was cobbling together the site across the street where Bruce Eichner is building a 50-story condo tower. Nonprofits are land rich and cash poor, Geoffrey says, and the market pricing made the time right to sell. He tells us that Cheerland, which plans condos, was the highest bidder in an extremely competitive marketing process.

Expensive bid or not, the building is likely to be an economic success, Geoff says, considering Witkoff’s Toy Building units have sold for $3,300 to $3,400/SF, Related and HFZ Captial’s One Madison (above) is over 90% sold for more than $3,600/SF, and Zeckendorf’s 18 Gramercy Park near Union Square sold out at over $4,000/SF. Bruce, whose sales office opens in three weeks, expects more than $4,000/SF. There’s also opportunity to extract retail value from 287 Park Ave S, Geoffrey says, as there’s none there now and retail rents on Park are approaching $300/SF.