Igal Namdar, nicknamed the mall “bottom feeder,” is coming for Midtown office.
The billionaire’s Namdar Realty Group is in contract to buy 250 West 57th Street from Empire State Realty Trust for roughly $280 million, sources told The Real Deal.
That’s quite the bargain compared to the $350 million Tony Malkin’s REIT had been asking when it put the 540,000-square-foot building up for sale earlier this year.
But Namdar knows a deal when he sees one. He’s made a name for himself buying up second-rate malls as others rush to cut bait. And now he’s making one of his biggest bets yet on a Manhattan office building.
“Our goal is to stick to those B and B-plus assets. Those A’s get to be too crazy,” Namdar told Bloomberg in 2021 of his mall bets. “The Ferraris of the world — that’s not the kind of car we’re looking for.”
Representatives for Namdar and ESRT did not respond to requests for comment. A Newmark team led by Adam Spies, Joshua King and Marcella Fasulo brokered the deal.
The contract price works out to about $518 per square foot for the 26-story property spanning a full block between Eighth Avenue and Broadway. The building is 84 percent leased with the clothing store T.J. Maxx anchoring the retail portion under a lease that extends through 2041.
ESRT has owned the asset since before its 2013 IPO and has invested about $140 million in capital improvements, including a new lobby and wellness center, elevator upgrades and revamped retail storefronts.
Namdar is buying the building with one of his frequent partners, Josh Rahmani and Ebi Khalil’s Empire Capital, as they’ve scoured the city for discounted real estate.
In 2023 they bought a Hell’s Kitchen office building for $40.5 million, 73 percent less than the $153 million Related Fund Management paid in 2018.
Not all of their investments have worked out, though.
In 2021 they bought the 25-story Garment District building at 345 Seventh Avenue for $107 million. But three years later, the occupancy at the building dropped and the owners started talks to hand the property over to their lender, Benefit Street Partners.
Last year, the partners sold the building for $85 million to The Katan Group, Mike Kohan of Kohan Retail Investment Group and investor Ilya Mikhailov, who are planning a residential conversion.
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