A firm founded by former executives from SL Green Realty and Broadway Real Estate Partners is hoping to unload a 12-story Chelsea office building that could fetch as much as $90 million — or almost double the purchase price paid during the real estate boom, industry insiders said.
Midtown-based Joss Realty Partners, founded by Steven Klein and Larry Botel, purchased 229 West 28th Street for $48.1 million in 2007, city records show. But today, the 155,000-square-foot property, known as the Caxton Building, is expected to fetch between $80 million and $90 million once it hits the market next week, sources said.
Located between Seventh and Eighth avenues, the 12-story building is in a section of northern Chelsea in Midtown South where office rents have taken off with the influx of technology and new media firms, which are fleeing higher rents in the Flatiron District.
The Jones Lang LaSalle investment sales team of Richard Baxter, Jon Caplan, Scott Latham and Yoron Cohen have the exclusive listing, insiders said. Baxter, speaking for the group, declined to comment.
The building’s tenants include a wide range of companies, from the social media marketing firm 33Across, founded in 2007, to the Fencers Club, a sporting group that was organized in 1883.
In addition, the building has attracted nightclubs. For years, the controversial club Shadow operated from the ground floor. But that business, which drew complaints from neighbors, closed earlier this year, and now the owner of the Meatpacking District’s Provocateur nightclub, Michael Satsky inked a deal to open a roughly 11,000-square-foot club in the building.
Klein, a one-time executive vice president of SL Green, and Botel, once with Broadway Real Estate Partners, founded Joss in 2005. Earlier this year, Klein left Joss and moved to the Midtown-based real estate investment firm Brickman as chief investment officer, as The Real Deal reported earlier this year. He did not respond to a request for comment, and Botel could not immediately be reached for comment. Satsky declined to comment.