MAG Partners Closes Transaction to Develop Residential Building in Chelsea
MAG Partners, the woman-owned development firm, announced today that they closed on the leasehold acquisition for 335 Eighth Avenue with Penn South, an affordable housing cooperative located in the Chelsea community of Manhattan. 335 Eighth Avenue will be a mixed-income apartment building with ground floor commercial space, including a grocery store.
The deal represents a second closing for the partnership between MAG Partners and Safanad, a real estate private equity firm. In 2020 the two firms announced their JV to pursue New York metropolitan area real estate together. They now have nearly 700 units of housing in development in Manhattan.
The new 188-unit building will be developed under the Affordable NY Program with thirty percent of its units reserved for low-and-middle income New Yorkers. The team secured the necessary footing for program inclusion in early 2022 and demolition will begin in the 1st quarter, 2023 followed by construction in the 3rd quarter, 2023. The contextual 200,000 square foot, 7-story building is designed by renowned local architects COOKFOX.
“We are proud to reach this important project milestone with Penn South and look forward to starting a new mixed-income residential building that will contribute to the coop’s beautiful campus and provide critical income to its mission,” said MaryAnne Gilmartin, Founder and CEO of MAG Partners. “We are grateful for our continued development relationship with Safanad who is building a second rental community in partnership with us.”
“Our close on the 8th Ave transaction demonstrates our continued faith in the strength of the New York City multifamily rental market; the project builds on our deep and successful partnership with MAG Partners, as already exhibited by our joint ground-up development project on 28th Street,” said Andrew Trickett, Partner and Head of Investments at Safanad.
Penn South, also known as Mutual Redevelopment Houses, initiated a process to identify and select a development partner to transform a corner parcel with a commercial building that required significant repairs. The ground lease payments will support Penn South’s core objective to maintain long-term affordability and quality of life for its nearly 5,000 residents. Washington Square Partners represented Mutual in the transaction.
“The revenue generated from this new partnership with MAG Partners will provide critical funds that permits our co-op to pay for capital improvements around our aging campus, keep monthly maintenance charges affordable, and support vital services and care that our residents depend on,” said Board President Ambur Nicosia.
“The coop was faced with a decision to make, after a thorough assessment from our professional engineers and real estate consultants: either we seek additional very costly loans in order to address major capital repairs to this two-story aging commercial building or enter into a long-term ground lease with a responsible developer who will demolish the existing building and build an affordable quality housing building that will blend into the fabric of the community and guarantee our limited equity coop cash flow for many years to come,” said General Manager Ryan Dziedziech.
Susi Yu and Jeff Rosen led the deal for the MAG Partners team. The parties were represented by Joshua Stein and Alexa Klein of Joshua Stein PLLC and Dena Cohen and Francesca Venezia of Herrick, Feinstein LLP.
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About MAG Partners: MAG Partners is a woman-owned, urban real estate company with decades of experience developing impactful, iconic, large-scale projects throughout New York City. Led by MaryAnne Gilmartin, together the MAG Partners team has successfully designed, built and operated over seven million square feet of office, residential and mixed-use projects, including over 2,000 units of housing, with a total value of over $4.5 billion. Their current multi-million square foot development portfolio includes three multifamily rental buildings and a ground-up commercial development in Manhattan and a master plan redevelopment in Baltimore.
About Safanad: Safanad is a global principal-led investment house established in 2009 with offices in New York and the Dubai International Financial Centre (DIFC). The firm has executed over 40 transactions worth over US$10 billion since inception and built market-leading platforms in the US and Europe in education, healthcare, digital infrastructure, and real estate. Today, it is the owner of the largest UK care home operator with over 15,000 residents, a leading global education provider serving ~50,000 students worldwide, and a major operator of data centers across the US. Deploying its own capital, alongside strategic partners and investors, Safanad executes across greenfield / development, turnaround, and roll-up strategies. Its partners and co-investors include leading publicly listed companies, sovereign wealth funds, and institutions from the US, Europe, and Middle East. Safanad is a registered investment advisor with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and regulated by the Dubai Financial Services Authority (DFSA).
About Penn South: Penn South (legal name Mutual Redevelopment Houses, Inc.), is an affordable housing cooperative that is self-managed and overseen by its 15-member Board of Directors and subject to the regulatory jurisdiction of the New York City Department of Housing Preservation & Development. Penn South contains 2,820 apartments with close to 5,000 residents in 15 buildings on a site bounded by Ninth Avenue, West 23rd Street, Eighth Avenue and West 29th Street in Manhattan.