BY LUIS GRONDA
Staff Writer
Two sought-after adjoining properties on the Astoria/Long Island City border were sold earlier this week.
According to Kalmon Dolgin Affiliates, properties located at 33-33 and 33-55 11th Street were sold for $14 million. The properties are a combined 57,400-square-feet and were the former home of Operative Cake, a baked goods business, that has since relocated to the Bronx.
The property brings with it 19-foot ceilings, multiple loading docks and about 1,700-square feet of available parking, according to a press release from Kalmon Dolgin announcing the sale. That company represented the seller in the transaction.
Grant Dolgin, the vice president of Kalmon Dolgin, said in an interview with the Queens Tribune that there was a lot of interest in the property and there was eventually a bidding war between two companies that had the most interest in purchasing the two warehouses. The company selling the properties, 33-11 Associates Partnership and Jacobson Realty Corp, had to close the Bronx-based property first before selling the western Queens property.
According to Dolgin, the selling company did not want it to turn into a bidding war and contacted the company who eventually bought it, JPRG Holdings, to say that if they can meet their asking price, the building would be theirs.
Dolgin said the new owner will lease out the property as it currently is now, a warehouse, but with the possibility of converting it to residential property in the future.
“33-33 and 33-55 11th Street also has the potential to be converted and developed into a rental or condominium building. It has 70,000 as-of-right buildable square feet for residential development,” he said in the release.
Dolgin said part of the reason it attracted so much interest is because of its location. He said that amount of property is not often available in a community like Astoria. The warehouses are located close to Socrates Sculpture Park and the Noguchi Museum and are convenient to get to via the Robert F. Kennedy Bridge and the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. The N and Q Subway lines are also nearby.
Hentze Dor Realty, a Long Island City-based firm that represented JPRG Holdings in the deal, has not responded to requests for comment for this story as of press time.
Reach Luis Gronda at (718) 357-7400, Ext. 127, lgronda@queenstribune.com, or @luisgronda.