GHP Office Realty, a White Plains-based real estate firm with an office in Greenwich, bought the former Martha Stewart production studio property in Westport earlier this month and put it on the market for $3.5 million.
Andrew Greenspan, principal of GHP Office Realty, said the company wants to sell the 6-acre, part-commercial and part-residential property at 19 Newtown Turnpike to a hedge fund, technology or financial services company, nonprofit, senior housing developer or a private school.
“It”™s a beautiful site with a lot of infrastructure in place,” Greenspan said. “It can be a unique home for a local or national company. It has a Westport address, and it”™s a hotly contested and extremely desirable place for a hedge fund, tech company or school.”
Stewart used the property for her “Martha Stewart Living” show for years and gave a tour of the space on an episode in 1998. It comprises a 29,171-square-foot main building and two single-family homes on the Norwalk-Westport border, with 110 parking spaces.
In a post-recession marketplace in which business tenants are more selective about the type of real estate they purchase, Greenspan said the Westport property is what he considers a “diamond in the rough.”
He said that after remaining cautious during the recession and leasing rather than buying space, local businesses are regaining their purchasing power. In his nearly 16 years at the company, which he founded in 1999, Greenspan noticed that demand for owning commercial business spaces has been increasing, he said.
“What”™s also happened over the past several years as a result of the recession is there have been buildings that have been antiquated or out of date and not appropriate for this marketplace because they”™ve fallen into financial distress or disrepair,” Greenspan said.
After the former studio property sustained six years of financial distress, GHP paid off the mortgage and cleaned up the building so it could go up for sale. Greenspan said his target buyer would be a growing company that wants to expand in Fairfield County.
“We bought the mortgage after it was in default, and we finalized the foreclosure,” Greenspan said. “We took the title to the property this month.”
Greenspan said GHP has received good response to its initial marketing. The plan is to bring the property back online in the first quarter of 2015.
