Sam Schneider, 35, and Dan Glaser, 29, are buying (with equity partners) everything they can in SoHo. In their three years since starting Imperium Capital, they've amassed a million feet, including the 30k SF Apple store at Prince and Greene and two office buildings totaling 650k SF with Stellar Management at 233 Spring and 161 Sixth Ave (below), to which they're adding another 150k feet. They met in '05 when paired at a development company doing a high-end West Village condo conversion, bonding through their backgrounds at Big 10 colleges (Sam a Wolverine from Cincinnati and Dan a Hoosier from Woodmere, LI). They formed a team at Eastern Consolidated, specializing in investment sales of all asset classes, but wanted to be principals, hunting only trophy assets.
They're bullish on SoHo retail, seeing it as not just the hottest market in the city but one with great upside because visitors make a beeline there as much as to Fifth or Madison Avenues, yet the rents are much lower. "It's a giant mall," Sam says, describing Broadway as the street of big boxes and side streets as the place for luxury. "The weekend foot traffic is insane," Dan adds, contending the narrower streets have a higher cool factor for high-spending young people. With a two-story building at 120 Prince that has 70 feet of frontage and a 15k SF loft building at 60 Wooster (in addition to a 102-unit apartment house near Columbus Circle and a 16k SF retail building in Williamsburg), they know how to build a portfolio because they themselves are its target demographic. With a shared love of football, they should also be looking for a sports bar tenant, but rooting for the Bengals and Jets, they're afraid to watch TV.
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