NEW YORK CITY — Andrew Franz Architect will design the renovation of the 11,000-square-foot Washington Houses Community Center in the East Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan. The community center offers a range of education, wellness, and community-building resources to local youths and seniors. The Andrew Franz team will transform key spaces of the facility including the entrance, reception and waiting areas and senior center. The team will also enhance the natural lighting and acoustics of the entire facility. The Criminal Justice Investment Initiative of the Manhattan District Attorney’s Office will fund the renovations.
NEW YORK CITY — Avison Young has negotiated the 12-year renewal of a 77,000-square-foot office space in Midtown Manhattan for investment and technology development firm D.E. Shaw. The space spans seven floors at Tower 45, a 458,446-square-foot, Class A office building located at 120 W. 45th St. The company has leased its space in the building since 2011. Arthur Mirante II, Mitti Liebersohn and John Ryan III of Avison Young represented the landlord, Kamber Management Co., in the lease negotiations. Timothy Dempsey, Roger Griswold and Munish Viralam of CBRE represented D.E. Shaw.
NEW YORK CITY — Transwestern Real Estate Services has brokered the sale of the leasehold interest for a new charter elementary school at a 65,000-square-foot building in The Bronx. Located at 1919 Arthur Ave., the school will be called Zeta Bronx Tremont Park Elementary and will serve students in pre-K through fifth grade starting in August 2021. Lindsay Ornstein, Stephen Powers and Thomas Hines represented Zeta Charter Schools in the leasehold negotiations. The building ownership, Joyland Group, was represented internally in the transaction.
ROCHESTER, N.Y. — MAG Capital Partners LLC (MAGCP), a Texas-based investment firm, has acquired a 42,700-square-foot frozen pie manufacturing facility in Rochester in a sale-leaseback deal. At the time of sale, SatisPie LLC occupied the property, which is located at 155 Balta Drive. An affiliate of SatisPie previously owned the property, and the frozen pie manufacturer has leased back its space. Mary Garnett of Barnes & Thornburg LLP represented MAGCP in the transaction. Luis Ortega and Kent Williams of Marcus & Millichap represented the seller. The sales price was undisclosed.
NEW YORK CITY — Entertainment and pop culture news outlet Uproxx has signed a 3,300-square-foot office lease in Manhattan’s Lower East Side. The company will occupy the entire seventh floor at 161 Bowery, a 25,000-square-foot office building originally built in 1920 and redeveloped in 2016. Uproxx, which is owned by The Warner Music Group, will relocate from a subleased space in the same building. Marx Realty owns the building. Both parties were represented internally in the lease negotiations.
NEW YORK CITY — JLL has brokered the $6.4 million sale of a residential development site located at 3041 Webster Ave. in The Bronx. The site currently houses a two-story, 15,140-square-foot warehouse that is owned and occupied by retailer Sam’s Carpet, but has been rezoned for a residential use. Karl Brumback, Eric Tiefen and Brian Streilein of JLL represented Sam’s Carpet in the transaction. Bolivar Development was the buyer. A construction timeline was not disclosed.
NEW YORK CITY — Local development and investment firm Jonathan Rose Cos. has acquired Tower West Apartments, a 217-unit multifamily property in Manhattan’s Upper West Side, for $93.8 million. Located at 65 W. 96th St., the 28-story building features a ground-floor terrace, community room, playground and onsite laundry facilities. The buyer plans upgrade the lobby, amenities and energy systems. The sale did not include the retail component of the asset. Rose Community Management has taken over management of the property. The seller was Starrett Corp., which originally developed the building in 1971.
NEW YORK AND BOSTON — Swedish construction company Skanska has begun a $40 million rehabilitation project for railway company Amtrak. The project will include structural modifications and industrial equipment upgrades for three maintenance facilities located in Boston, New York and Washington D.C. Skanska originally built the facilities 20 years ago and was contracted again to upgrade them to accommodate the upcoming Acela 21 high-speed rail service trains. Construction is slated for completion in the first quarter of 2021, and the new trains will be placed into service late next year.
NEW YORK CITY — JLL has brokered the $10.8 million sale of 219-221 East 59th Street, two adjacent multifamily properties with ground-floor retail space in Midtown Manhattan. Each three-story building spans 10,560 square feet of space, including four residential units and 3,900 square feet of ground-floor retail space that were occupied by separate retail tenants at the time of sale. Tom Gammino and Clint Olsen led a JLL team that represented the seller, Gak Properties, in the transaction. Jeffrey Znaty of Kassin Sabbagh Realty represented the buyer, Cofinance Inc., the U.S. subsidiary of Cofinance Group SA.
NEW YORK CITY — Office leasing in Manhattan has slowed amid the global COVID-19 pandemic, according to a first-quarter 2020 office leasing report by Toronto-based brokerage firm Avison Young. According to the report, Manhattan saw approximately 7 million square feet of new leasing activity in the first quarter of the year, down from 8.4 million year-over-year. The firm reported that leasing volume was down more than 39 percent by the end of March, compared to March 2019. Additionally, eight office construction projects larger than 150,000 square feet have been halted as nonessential construction, and completion dates for those projects have been pushed back indefinitely. Several of those projects, including SL Green’s 1.6 million-square-foot One Vanderbilt in Midtown, have sizable prelease commitments from tenants including TD Bank and law firm Greenberg Traurig.