Old Navy site in Herald Square draws eye-popping price
By Steve Cuozzo | April 28, 2014 | 9:16pm
Photo: Shutterstock
Herald Square’s exploding retail market drove an eye-popping purchase price for 150 W. 34th St., the Old Navy store site between Broadway and Seventh Avenue.
The deal closed for $255 million last week, according to sources who also revealed that the Chera family’s Crown Acquisition Group partnered with Starwood Capital Group in the purchase.
The seller was a Greek family.
Old Navy is in the last few years of a 20-year lease at what’s now a four-story, 80,000 square-foot building that runs through to 33rd Street. It has enough air rights to permit a new building of around 300,000 square feet, which could be used for any combination of retail, offices, apartments or a hotel.
However, Starwood vice president Nicholas Doering-Dorival said, “At the current moment, we believe there is considerable upside in the existing retail box. We expect that retail rents and property values along 34th Street will continue to rise.” He declined to comment on the price.
The purchase price works out to about $850 per buildable square foot, a number once unthinkable in the West 30s — but that was before the Far West Side boom, including Hudson Yards.
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