After 101 years, India House club sells FiDi home for $5.9M

SomeraRoad, an investment company, through the entity Mtp-One Hanover Square Propco LLC paid $5.9 million to the India House through the entity India House, Inc. for the club’s condominium unit at 1 Hanover Square in Financial District, Manhattan. The building with a total of 35,559 square feet was divided in 1999 into two commercial condos. This is the larger unit, designated unit 1, with 24,496 square feet. The smaller unit is owned by Harry Poulakkos, who operates the restaurant Harry’s in the building.

India House was founded in 1914 as a club for men with overseas business, and in 1921 it acquired this parcel, according to the club’s website. 
The deal closed on March 14, 2022 and was recorded on March 28, 2022. The sale price per built square foot is $240 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 signatory for India House was John F. Lowman. The signatory for SomeraRoad was Fergus Campbell. This is for commercial unit 1. Fergus Campbell is a managing principal at SomeraRoad. India House is a clubhouse. SomeraRoad’s website says it focuses on five categories: “Value-Add/Opportunistic, Opportunity Zone, Development, Debt Investing, and Net-Lease/Income-Producing.”

Prior sales and revenue

Prior to this transaction, PincusCo has no record that the buyer SomeraRoad had purchased any other properties and has no record it sold any properties over the past 24 months.

The property

The 1 Hanover Square parcel has a total lot size of 24,496 square feet. The city-designated market value for the property in 2022 is $7.5 million.

Violations and lawsuits

The property was not involved in any lawsuits or bankruptcies in the past years. In addition, according to city public data, the property has not received any significant violations in the last year.

Development

There are no active new building construction projects or major alteration projects with initial costs more than $5 million on this tax lot.

The neighborhood

In Financial District, the majority, or 71 percent of the 85.8 million square feet of commercial built space are office buildings, with residential elevator buildings next occupying 18 percent of the space. In sales, Financial District has the 5th highest sale turnover among other neighborhoods in the city with $1.7 billion in sales volume in the last two years. For development, Financial District has 1.5 times the average amount of major developments relative to other neighborhoods and is the 15th highest in Manhattan. It had 1.3 million square feet of commercial and multi-family construction under development in the last two years, which represents 2 percent of the neighborhood’s built space.

The block

On this tax block, PincusCo has identified the owners of three of the 21 commercial properties representing 22,034 square feet of the 2,107,821 square feet. The largest owner is Meadow Partners, followed by Ronan Downs and then Davean Holdings. There are no active new building construction projects on this tax block.

The majority, or 91 percent of the 2.1 million square feet of built space are office buildings, with industrial buildings next occupying 4 percent of the space.

Surrounding

Within a 400-foot radius of 1 Hanover Square, PincusCo identified 16 commercial real estate items of interests occurred over the past 24 months.
Of those 16 items, one was in new building development. It was a new building permit application filed on August 30, 2021 for a 19,825-square-foot R-2 building with 10 residential units at 126 Pearl Street.
Of those 16 items, five were for major renovation including a certificate of occupancy change. They were three permit applications with a total initial cost of $2.3 million, one permit with a total initial cost of $1.2 million and one initial temporary certificate of occupancy issuance for a project that initially costed $250,000. The most recent of these five items was the filing on December 16, 2021 for a 7,480-square-foot COM building with four residential units at 48 Stone Street.
Of those 16 items, six were sales above $5 million totaling $940.8 million. The most recent of the six was Commerzbank which bought five condo units in the 19,891-square-foot, one-unit industrial (RG) on 7 Hanover Square and eight other properties for $756.3 million from Northwind Group on December 29, 2021.
Of those 16 items, four were loans above $5 million totaling $426.6 million. The most recent of the four was Meadow Partners which borrowed $43.5 million from Fortress Investment Group secured by the 9,577-square-foot, four-unit mixed-use building (S3) on 15 South William Street and 11 other properties on January 4, 2022.

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