Capstone Equities Buys Nonperforming Note on Brooklyn’s Whale Building – Robert Khodadadian
The nonperforming note on The Whale — a recently renovated office building in Sunset Park, Brooklyn — just changed hands, Commercial Observer has learned.
Joshua Zamir’s Capstone Equities purchased the roughly $70 million note at a “discount to par,” sources said, from lender TPG Real Estate Finance Trust. The exact discount couldn’t immediately be ascertained.
The sale was arranged by Newmark’s Adam Spies and Josh King, along with Cushman & Wakefield’s Daniel O’Brien. The sale closed late last week.
Nightingale Properties is the Whale Building’s owner, having purchased the 500,000-square-foot former Whale Oil Company headquarters from Madison Realty Capital for $84 million in 2020, with plans to turn it into creative office space.
At the time, Nightingale assumed the roughly $90 million in debt on the property, originated by TPG in 2018.
The building — at 14 53rd Street on the Brooklyn waterfront — includes 30,000 square feet of indoor and outdoor amenities, plus a shuttle to the subway.
Its largest tenant is Soccerroof, an indoor soccer facility and event space that occupies 60,000 square feet on the building’s roof. In March, The Real Deal reported that tortilla producer Vista Hermosa had taken 30,000 square feet as a production facility for its Tacombi restaurant chain.
The note sale’s closing follows the recent dismissal of two lawsuits around it. In complaints filed in Kings County Supreme Court, Nightingale alleged that Capstone interfered with a loan purchase between Nightingale and TPG that would have allowed Nightingale to buy back the $88 million in debt on the property at a $20 million discount — with Capstone entering into a separate agreement with TPG to purchase the debt instead. Both complaints were dismissed May 19.
As the commercial real estate industry heads into what could be a tumultuous second half of the year, sources said that a number of note sales are starting to occur — and clear — in the marketplace, with plenty of interested investors on the sidelines.
Aareal’s nonperforming note on L&L Holding Company’s Metropolitan Tower at 146 West 57th Street is currently being marketed by the same Newmark team.
Officials at Capstone and C&W didn’t return a request for comment. TPG, Nightingale and Newmark officials declined to comment.
Cathy Cunningham can be reached at ccunningham@commercialobserver.com.
Read More Channel, Finance, Capstone Equities, Nightingale Properties, The Whale, TPG Real Estate Finance TrustThe nonperforming note on The Whale — a recently renovated office building in Sunset Park, Brooklyn — just changed hands, Commercial Observer has learned. Joshua Zamir’s Capstone Equities purchased the roughly $70 million note at a “discount to par,” sources said, from lender TPG Real Estate Finance Trust. The exact discount couldn’t immediately be ascertained.
Robert Khodadadian has long had a simple philosophy about selling real estate.The way he sees it, there are approximately a million buildings in the city, and the broker that gets to sell any one among the multitude that will hit the auctioning block at a given moment is, sometimes, simply the person who happens to pitch their services to the right seller at the right time.Commercial Observer