RPW Group has added another property to its portfolio: 100 Manhattanville Road in Purchase.
Robert P. Weisz, president and CEO of RPW Group, told the Business Journal that the sale closed last week. He said that a legal agreement prevented him from disclosing the purchase price.
RPW Group is the owner, developer and manager of seven other major Westchester properties and 275 Madison Ave. in New York City.
The Westchester Bank provided a mortgage of $26 million. “The Westchester Bank has been a great partner to work with,” Weisz said. “One of the reasons the seller sold it to us was because we were able to move very fast and The Westchester Bank was very effective in making this happen.” Weisz said that the entire transaction took only a couple of weeks.
Records on file at the Westchester County Clerk”™s office showed that on June 12, 2018, a deed for 100 Manhattanville Road was filed showing a transfer of the property from Savills Fund Management GmbH in Germany to 100 Manhattanville LLC, a company having an address in care of Caceis Bank, also in Germany. According to the documents, the consideration at that time was $49.8 million.
In the sale to RPW Group, CBRE was representing the seller and Jeffrey Dunne, a vice chairman at CBRE, said, “Ultimately, the tightening market bodes well for RPW Group to lease up the remaining vacancy at 100 Manhattanville.” CBRE said the building “is one of Westchester County’s premier office complexes” and reported Mastercard was the anchor tenant. Mastercard’s global headquarters are nearby at 2000 Purchase St.
The 290,631-square-foot, four-story Class A office building at 100 Manhattanville Road is on 23.75 acres. It originally was built as Nestle”™s corporate headquarters in 1986. It was subsequently converted for multitenant use.
“It is about 65% leased and we are looking to add to that,” Weisz said. “There are very few buildings in the county that are full Class A buildings like 100 Manhattanville Road. It has a wonderful cafeteria, wonderful fitness center, it has covered parking, it has management on site and it”™s just a wonderful piece of real estate.”
RPW Group has arranged for Newmark Knight Frank to be the exclusive leasing representative for the building. Glenn Walsh, executive managing director of NKF and Lawrence Ruggieri, senior marketing director, will head the team handling the building. “We now represent the RPW Group in exclusive leasing assignments for more than 2.1 million square feet across eight properties in Westchester County,” Walsh said. “Vacancy rates in the eastern I-287 market have remained in the single digits for the past 24 months, while Class A rental rates have been steadily growing since 2017.”
Weisz pointed out that the building has a block of space covering 82,000 square feet on the fourth floor, which he said was “the largest block of space on a single floor in the market.” While he did not have specific asking rents set, he said the price range will be very competitive.
Weisz said that the fact that the building is on so much land makes it attractive for prospective tenants. “It has great parking, it has great landscaping and what we find is that tenants in this market now have more dense office facilities with more people than they used to. If we have a great deal of parking available it”™s a big plus for the property.”
Weisz noted that companies no longer are locked into 9-to-5 hours. “They have people working very early in the morning and they have people working late into the night. Or, they have people working on weekends. The fact that we have a concierge in the building 24/7 is a big factor companies like. They know that if there”™s an employee working on the weekend, or there”™s an employee coming in at 10 o”™clock at night, there is somebody in the building monitoring who is coming in, who is going out. We have cameras throughout and so that”™s one of the features people are looking at.“
The property is about a seven-minute drive to Westchester County Airport and is close to the Hutchinson River Parkway as well as Interstates 684 and 287.
Weisz expressed optimism for the future of commercial and residential real estate in Westchester and pointed to changes along the Westchester Avenue corridor.
“With the addition of Lifetime Fitness, with the addition of Wegman”™s, with the addition of all the hospitals, what used to be a sea of office space is now giving people the opportunity to live and work and have a complete lifestyle. The icing on the cake is the amount of residential that”™s being built. That”™s a tremendous change in the Westchester environment because companies had difficulty finding employees and now the talent is going to live in Westchester and that is going to definitely help to continue the strong regional market.”
