Fairway Market’s Former, 2.5-Acre Harlem Home Up for Grabs
The assemblage is being marketed for either sale or triple-net lease
By Cathy Cunningham August 19, 2021 6:58 pm
reprints
Significant development sites in Manhattan are few and far between, but hold onto your hats, because a 2.5-acre one — “ripe” for a number of potential future uses — just hit the market.
The Glickberg family — the founders of New York City fixture Fairway Market — is offering an assemblage of eight lots with potential for 219,000 square feet of new development either for sale or triple-net lease, Commercial Observer has learned. Initial pricing guidance couldn’t immediately be gleaned.
A Fairway store once sat at the site at 2328 12th Avenue, between 12th Avenue and the Henry Hudson Parkway in Harlem. It shuttered last year, following the retailer’s January 2020 announcement that it had filed for Chapter 11 and planned to sell its New York City stores.
Spanning three full city blocks, the site now up for grabs currently includes a 68,000-square-foot parking lot; a 13,000-square-foot vacant warehouse; a 41,000-square-foot vacant building for retail, commercial or industrial use; and some prime, high-grossing billboard space — visible to highway drivers, as well as train riders on Amtrak’s Hudson line.
Cushman & Wakefield (CWK)’s Eric Roth, Adam Spies, Robert Shapiro and Tyler Signora are marketing the assemblage, sources familiar with the offering told CO. A C&W spokesperson declined to comment.
The high-profile location sits within Columbia University‘s expansive zoning — the Special Manhattanville Mixed-Use Zoning District, or MMU — and near its brand-new campus. The area is currently zoned for a myriad of potential uses, with one source familiar with the offering describing it as the largest industrial-zoned site south of 145th Street.
The source said the site is one that multiple developers have watched closely for some time as Columbia bought up space around it, and that they wouldn’t rule out Columbia also being a potentially interested bidder.
The offering only recently launched, but some of the city’s top developers are already mulling the site’s potential. Sources suggested it could be an especially good fit for a large e-commerce company as a last-mile distribution center — given its significant scale and top location right on the highway with easy northbound and southbound access — but other potential uses include a life sciences facility, data center, or destination retail. (Amazon previously picked up several former Fairway sites in New Jersey.)
Cathy Cunningham can be reached at ccunningham@commercialobserver.com.
