Commercial real estate company Gazit-Globe Ltd. (NYSE: GZT; TASE: GZT; TSX: GZT) yesterday reported the acquisition of another commercial property in Brooklyn, New York, for $47.3 million. The property is called The Edge Retail and is located in the Williamsburg area of Brooklyn. It has 5,600 square meters of rental space. The purchase is the real estate company's second in Brooklyn in two months and its third in New York.
Gazit-Globe operates in the US through fully-owned subsidiary Gazit Horizons. The newly acquired property is the commercial part of The Edge, a luxury residential area with over 900 housing units, 500 parking spaces, seven dunam (1.75 acres) of open space, and a ferry terminal from which ferries run to Wall Street and mid-town Manhattan. The property's current occupancy rate is 81%.
The site, on which stand four buildings, is located between two streets along Kent Avenue, which runs along the Williamsburg waterfront. 150,000 people live within two kilometers of the property and 1.25 million people live within five kilometers of it.
Gazit Horizons president and CEO Jeff Mooallem said, "We have been following the Williamsburg neighborhood for some time and believe that The Edge is the ideal combination of location, tenants, and attractiveness for our business model. Over the past decade, the population within a radius of half a kilometer of the property grew 75% and average income per household soared to $160,000.
"Together with a large number of projects in the development stages north and south of the property, we believe that the waterfront in Williamsburg will continue growing and that the property will benefit from growth in the future in population, the number of employees in offices, and in ferry passengers. Adding the property to our portfolio in New York fits our strategy exactly."
Gazit-Globe controlling shareholder and CEO Chaim Katzman wrote a letter to the company's investors in March stating that in 2017, "We acquired three properties, one each in New York, Miami, and Boston for a total of NIS 450 million ($140 million as of the date of letter, O.C.). We intend to continue increasing this portfolio until it reaches $2-3 billion within 3-5 years."
Gazit-Globe then announced the acquisition of three more properties in Brooklyn for $63 million. Its latest acquisition bring its total property acquisitions to $250 million.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on July 5, 2018
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