Spear Street Capital: San Fran-based office landlord buys SoHo property for $52M

A San Francisco-based office landlord with properties in New York and across the U.S., Canada and Europe has added one more Manhattan building to its portfolio for $52 million, records show.Spear Street Capital, which was founded in 2001 and has since amassed more than $11 billion in investments, has acquired 446 Broadway in SoHo, according to a deed that appeared in the city register Wednesday. The firm currently maintains two other Manhattan properties, 641 Sixth Ave. and 2 Crosby St., and it previously bought and sold 315 Park Ave. South, according to its website.Known as the L'Atelier, the 5-story commercial building between Howard and Grand streets was sold by the investment firm KPG Funds, headquartered just down the block at 433 Broadway. KPG bought the circa-1915 building for $46 million in 2018, according to city records, and redeveloped it into boutique offices. The property was named "Best Office Development" by Commercial Property Executive's CPE Influence Awards in 2022.The roughly 40,000-square-foot building is currently occupied by household goods store Rumi Life on the ground floor with offices above it, including one that's home to Santa Monica-based video editing service Cabin Editing Co. It made its New York debut in 2021, when it signed a 10-year lease for 7,000 square feet of space on the top floor of the Broadway building.The average asking rent in the neighborhood for ground-floor retail is $281 per square foot, according to a report from commercial real estate firm JLL from the first quarter of this year; asking rents for SoHo office space, meanwhile, can range from $42 to $128 per square foot, according to LoopNet.Greg Kraut, KPG's co-founder and chief executive office, who signed the sale documents, did not respond to a request for comment.John Grassi, the chief executive officer of Spear Street Capital, signed the deed on behalf of the buyer. The global office landlord has more than 19 million square feet of holdings across the country as well as in Ireland and British Columbia. Spear Street did not immediately respond to a request for comment about its plans for the site.David Malawer, the senior managing director of Midtown-based firm Newmark Knight Frank, is the broker for the building's office tenants; and Richard Skulnik, executive vice president of commercial real estate firm Ripco, also based in Midtown, is the broker for the building's retail tenants. Neither Malawer nor Skulnik responded to a request for comment.