Faros Properties, a Manhattan-based real estate investment firm that has made its mark as a new player in the Westchester and Fairfield markets in recent years, has scored another notable deal with its $39.5 million sale of 555 Theodore Fremd Ave., the three-building, approximately 170,000-square-foot International Corporate Center at Rye.
- 555 Theodore Fremd Ave. in Rye.
The sale price was 30 percent higher than that paid by the Faros team to acquire the property 3 1/2 years ago.
Faros with Gould & Co., its Boston-based partner in Faros Corporate Center Rye LLC, paid $30.3 million for the Rye property in 2011. At the time of that sale, the complex was more than 80 percent occupied. Faros Properties, which undertook a renovations project at the corporate center, reportedly had raised the tenant occupancy rate to 98 percent at the time of the recent deal.
The identity of the glass-sheathed office center”™s new owner has not been disclosed. The purchasing entity, Rye VS LLC, listed a Manhattan attorney, Fabrizio Grasso, as its agent when registering with the state Department of State last October. Grasso on the website of his law firm, Oberdier & Ressmeyer LLP, is said to primarily represent European companies and their U.S. affiliates in transactions.
Richard Goldstein, president of Goldstein & Associates Realty Inc. in White Plains, represented the buyer. He did not respond to a request for comment on the deal from the Business Journal.
Faros and the buyer reached a sale agreement last November, though the deed was not recorded with the Westchester County Clerk”™s office until mid-January. REBusiness Online, a trade publication, first reported the deal in late November.
The sale was brokered for Faros Properties by Holliday Fenoglio Fowler LP in New York, which also represented the Rye landlord in its 2011 acquisition.
