NEW YORK CITY—Chinese development firm Kuafu Properties is continuing to make significant investment here. The firm has closed on its purchase of a development site at East 60th Street after paying $300 million in cash.
Holiday Fenoglio Fowler secured $200 million of the financing for Kuafu. HFF's debt placement team was led by Christopher Peck and Jay Marshall. The firm placed the floating-rate loan with Mack Real Estate Credit Strategies. Loan proceeds are being used for the purchase of the fee simple interest in the property and to fund pre-development costs of a luxury residential tower with approximately 40,000 square feet of retail space.
Located at 143-161 E. 60th St., between Lexington and Third avenues, the property was sold by the World Wide Group, which completed the property assemblage in 2014. Cushman & Wakefieldofficials, who brokered the deal, said the parcels can accommodate a mixed-use property of residential and commercial space that “due to the unlimited height potential, expansive lot size, and desirable location,” can “become one of the city's tallest structures.”
News of Kuafu's plans for the storied Subway Inn site broke in July when it was reported that the property was under contract. At the time, Kuafu had two other projects under development in Manhattan: a hotel and condo tower called Hudson Rise, across from the Jacob Javits Convention Center and a residential-and-retail building at East 86th Street and Lexington Avenue. Globest.com reports that Kuafu also is expanding and is looking for acquisitions in Brooklyn, New Jersey and Washington, DC.
The 60th St. assemblage, consisting of six contiguous low-rise buildings that sit on approximately 19,685 square feet of land, features 200 feet of street frontage directly across the street from the 's flagship store and contains roughly 282,925 buildable square feet above grade. Zoning allows for a base FAR of 10.0 on a residential or commercial basis with an additional 2.0 FAR of strictly residential rights permitted through the Inclusionary Housing Program, which have already been transferred to the site and were included in the sale, C&W reports. The sale price equates to approximately $1,060 per buildable square foot.
“World Wide did an amazing job of assembling this site over a 10-year period which created tremendous value in the property,” says Cushman & Wakefield's Bob Knakal, chairman, New York investment sales, who exclusively handled the property sale with Clint Olsen, a director in C&W's capital markets group.
Knakal also praised Kuafu in its efforts to close the development site purchase. “I have rarely seen a foreign buyer move so swiftly, yet carefully, to acquire such a major site. They were totally professional every step of the way.”
The seller was represented by attorneys Laurie Grasso and Douglas Hoffmann of Hunton & Williams. Attorney Daniel Dwyer of Dai & Associates represented the buyer.
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