The biggest investment sales deal of the year didn’t even involve brokerages.
In March, Amazon bought the landmarked Lord & Taylor building at 424 Fifth Avenue for $978 million.
The e-commerce giant did a direct deal with the seller, a joint venture of Rhone Capital, Hudson’s Bay Company and WeWork, which originally planned to renovate the 660,000-square-foot building to use as its corporate headquarters.
The deal, which worked out to about $1,480 per square foot, closed on March 12, just one week before Gov. Andrew Cuomo ordered all nonessential businesses, including real estate firms, to pause in-person activities as Covid-19 spread throughout the city. New York City’s investment sales market, already navigating a slow few years, took a big hit, with big deals stalled or falling apart altogether.
Savills announced that it represented the Saadia Group in a 40,738 s/f sublease at 275 Madison Avenue.
The New York City based investment firm will leverage the contiguous space as the new headquarters for Lord & Taylor and New York & Company, whose intellectual properties were acquired by the Saadia Group in October of last year. Andrew Zang, an assistant director at Savills, said Jack Saadia, principal and co-founder of the Saadia Group, sought a space for the firm’s recently acquired brands and tapped Savills for a strategic plan that included identifying a location that would allow Lord & Taylor and New York & Company to quickly establish operations while maintaining a New York City presence and accommodating future growth.
Another former Massey Knakal broker is getting back together with the gang.
Brock Emmetsberger, who was let go from JLL in the fall amid a round of belt-tightening, has joined Paul Massey’s B6 Real Estate Advisors, the company told
The Real Deal.
Emmetsberger is a veteran of Massey’s previous firm, Massey Knakal Realty Services. The B6 CEO cited his close ties with the broker and his track record particularly in the Chelsea and Greenwich Village markets as reasons for bringing him on board.
“He brings an immense amount of knowledge and experience to our firm,” Massey said.
Over the course of his 17-year career, Emmetsberger has brokered $1.7 billion worth of deals. Massey said he works on roughly 20 percent of the transactions in Chelsea.