Anbau Plotting Condos at Verizon Parking Garage Site in Hamilton Heights
By Rey Mashayekhi February 26, 2018 4:04 pm
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Residential development firm Anbau has acquired two adjacent parking garages at 620 West 153rd Street in the Hamilton Heights section of Upper Manhattan for $22.5 million with the goal of building residential condominiums on the site, Commercial Observer has learned.
Anbau closed on its purchase of the two-story garages between Broadway and Riverside Drive earlier this month after entering contract late last year. The seller, Verizon, has been using the facilities to park and house its service vehicles.
Having finalized its acquisition of the site, which features approximately 150,000 buildable square feet, the NoMad-based development firm has drawn up plans for two luxury residential condo buildings, designed by architecture firm DXA Studio, that will be connected via a landscaped courtyard and feature views of the Hudson River.
“We see [Hamilton Heights] as the next logical emerging neighborhood,” Anbau Founder and President Stephen Glascock told Commercial Observer. He cited how prices have “shot up substantially” for both condos and rentals in areas like the Manhattanville section of West Harlem, to the south of Hamilton Heights.
Glascock said the two planned condo buildings would likely hold around 150 units combined, with prices for the all-market-rate units likely to range from below $1 million to up to $3 million. Anbau, which financed its acquisition of the site with a pre-construction bridge loan from Goldman Sachs (GS), expects to begin work on the project within the next six months with a view to completing the development in the next two to three years, he added.
Anbau will also provide parking for Verizon and its service vehicles at the property, Glascock said, with those accommodations to be separate from the parking provided to residents at the condo development.
Representatives for Verizon could not be reached for comment.
Verizon had retained Cushman & Wakefield (CWK)’s Bob Knakal, Josh Kuriloff, Jonathan Hageman and Patrick Yannotta to market the property. Anbau had no broker in the deal.
Knakal told CO that C&W received “extremely robust budding activity on the property” from prospective buyers, which he attributed to “the positive changes that the [Hamilton Heights] neighborhood has experienced over the last 10 to 20 years.”
“It’s a very desirable location,” Knakal said, pointing to rising interest in the market for Upper Manhattan development sites at large—including at 4109 Broadway in Washington Heights, where C&W has been retained to sell a four-story church building with nearly 90,000 buildable square feet on behalf of Christ Church, United Methodist of New York City.
That property will likely be converted into residential condos as well, Knakal added, noting that developers are increasingly looking uptown to take advantage of lower land costs “that make it a lot more feasible to build condos”—particularly at a price point more appealing to prospective residential buyers.
Glascock agreed, noting that the Anbau “can pass on that low land cost to translate to lower prices for condos” at its new site and that the firm believes there is “strong demand” for units in the $1-million to $3-million range that will be served by the new Hamilton Heights development.
Anbau specializes primarily in the Manhattan condo market, with recent projects including Citizen360, an 84-unit SHoP Architects-designed building at 360 East 89th Street in Yorkville, and 207W79, a 19-unit Upper West Side property at 207 West 79th Street designed by Morris Adjmi Architects.
The firm also owns several multifamily rental properties in the borough; in December 2017, Anbau acquired two five-story buildings holding a combined 22 apartments at 53-55 First Avenue in the East Village for $16.2 million.
