Vornado Buying Madison Marquette LIC Property for $142M [Updated]
By Lauren Elkies Schram November 24, 2014 5:32 pm
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Vornado Realty Trust (VNO) is buying the Center Building, an eight-story, 437,00-square-foot office building in Long Island City, Queens, from Madison Marquette in partnership with Perella Weinberg Partners, Vornado announced today.
The building, at 33-00 Northern Boulevard, is 98 percent leased, the firm noted.
Washington, D.C.-based real estate investment firm Madison Marquette paid $84.5 million for the 444,606-square-foot building on an 1.44-acre-site in late 2012, property records indicate.
Since then, Madison Marquette increased tenant occupancy from the low 80s percent to 98 percent, converted a loading dock to retail space and brought the building to “institutional-level quality,” said Arvind Bajaj, a managing director at Madison Marquette.
David Robinov and Marc Warren of Ackman-Ziff represented the seller in the direct deal, which went into contract last Friday. Mr. Bajaj and colleague Ryan Colbert negotiated Madison Marquette’s purchase of the building in 2012 in an off-market deal from Brooklyn-based Hampshire Properties. Mr. Robinov declined to comment.
The purchase includes the assumption of an existing $62 million, 4.43 percent mortgage maturing in October 2018, Vornado said. The deal is expected to close in the first quarter of 2015.
The sale comes on the heels of Madison Marquette and Perella Weinberg buying the Bank Note Building in the Bronx for $114 million.
Update: This story was edited to include a comment from Arvind Bajaj of Madison Marquette, as well as the names of the seller’s brokers and a “no comment” from one of those brokers.
