Lake Forest Bank lends Sitex $39.4M to refinance Queens industrial outdoor storage site

Sitex Group has secured a $39.4 million loan from Lake Forest Bank & Trust Company to refinance a Queens industrial outdoor storage property, Commercial Observer reported.

The collateral is 58-80 Borden Avenue in Maspeth: a 146,583-square-foot site with 26,619 square feet of building space, according to JLL. Sitex bought the property from the Steinberg family for $50 million in late 2021, as Traded previously reported. The new loan equals about 79 percent of that purchase price, not a current loan-to-value ratio. JLL arranged the debt, with Jillian Mariutti and Alex Staikos leading its capital markets team.

The loan is supported by a 20-year lease the New York City Fire Department signed in February 2023 for a new garage and repair facility at the site, CO reported at the time. The lease runs to 2043, and the property sits next to the Long Island Expressway.

On a site where the buildings occupy roughly a fifth of the land, the LIE adjacency and a city-agency tenant carry more of the underwriting than the sector label does — which is the infill-and-credit-tenancy bid this publication has described.