Rockrose signs $210M refi with Metlife for 395-unit LIC tower, 6th largest Queens refi in 12 months

By Varvara Budetti

Rockrose Development signed a $210 million refinance loan with MetLife for the 395-unit residential building at 47-05 Center Boulevard in Long Island City, Queens. This was the sixth-largest refinance loan in Queens over the past 12 months.

The deal closed on February 16, 2022 and was recorded on March 3, 2022.

Previous loans for the property included $159 million provided by Wells Fargo in 2012 and assigned to Deutsche Bank via Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation. The Queens West Development Corporation, a subsidiary of Empire State Development, provided an $83.8 million loan in February of 2022 before both loans were assigned to MetLife.

“This is Rockrose’s first deal with MetLife, and we appreciate their confidence in us during such uncertain times. We both share a very positive outlook on the New York City residential market as we emerge from the pandemic,” Judd Emin, Senior Vice President at Rockrose said in a comment to PincusCo.

Andy Singer of Avison Young arranged the financing for Rockrose.

Richard A. Brancato, COO of Rockrose Development Corp., signed on the loan through the entity 47-05 Center SPE L.L.C. Michael Hofheinz signed for MetLife.

Amy Frye of Wells Fargo and Oluwatobi Jaiyesimi of Empire State Development signed on the corresponding loan assignments.

The property has 631,601 square feet of built space according to PincusCo analysis of city data. The loan price per built square foot is $332 per the PincusCo analysis. (The price per square foot analysis is the transaction price divided by square feet as reported in public records and assumes no air rights have been sold.)

The 631,601-square-foot property generated revenue of $21.1 million or $33 per square foot, according to the most recent income and expense figures.

In Long Island City, the bulk, or 33 percent of the 66.2 million square feet of built space are residential elevator buildings, followed by industrial buildings which occupy 30 percent of the space. In sales, Long Island City has 4.2 times the average sales volume among other neighborhoods with $1.2 billion in sales volume in the last two years and is the highest in Queens.

For development, Long Island City is the 2nd most active neighborhood among other neighborhoods. It had 9.2 million square feet of commercial and multi-family construction under development in the last two years, which represents 14 percent of the neighborhood’s built space.

On the tax block, the majority, or 97 percent of the 3.5 million square feet of built space are residential elevator buildings, with specialty buildings next occupying 3 percent of the space.

Within a 400-foot radius of 47-05 Center Boulevard, PincusCo identified three commercial real estate items of interests occurred over the past 24 months.

One of those three items was a sale which Alexander Kostovetsky bought the 12,500-square-foot, one-unit industrial (F5) on 5-17 47th Road for $6.7 million from Ronald Sloop on January 4, 2021.

Of those three items, two were loans above $5 million totaling $213.8 million. The most recent of the two was Alexander Kostovetsky which borrowed $15.8 million from Valley National Bank secured by the 12,500-square-foot, one-unit industrial (F5) on 5-17 47th Road and one other property on March 16, 2021.

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