Invesco Spends $141M on NYC’s 130 Prince St.

By Nicholas Ziegler, News Editor

Waterman Interests L.L.C. has turned a nearly $30 million profit on its asset at 130 Prince St. in New York City, selling the building for $140.5 million to Invesco. Waterman purchased the property in 2007 — along with its advisor J.P. Morgan Asset Management — for $112 million and, during the last five years, has aggressively re-leased and improved the structure to maximize the building’s full value, according to the company.

The building, which spans 88,000 square feet at the corner of Prince and Wooster Streets in SoHo, is 96 percent leased. The office portion is occupied by MAC Cosmetics, a division of Estee Lauder Inc., and the retail portion is leased to shoe retailer Cole Haan a division of Nike Inc. Lacoste, and True Religion Jeans.

Since purchasing the asset in 2007, obviously the capital and commercial real estate markets have been through unprecedented volatility, Philip Waterman III, founder & managing member of Waterman, said. We certainly hope and expect to repeat this type of result as we continue to grow the company in the Manhattan office market.

Lower Manhattan, and SoHo in particular, has been on the rise since the market’s bottom point. According to an October 2011 report by services firm Cushman & Wakefield Inc., the retail availability rate in SoHo, which stretches from West Houston to Grand Streets and West Broadway to Broadway, continued to decline to 4.2 percent, down 1.7 percentage points from the end of the second quarter of 2011. The average asking rent increased $33 per square foot to $301 per square foot, while premier streets like Broadway, Spring Street and Prince Street averaged almost $527 per square foot.

Fried Frank and Eastdil Secured represented the Waterman partnership in the transaction.