The Dime's commercial pieces sell for $28.5M

Two transactions recorded Friday carved up the commercial pieces of The Dime in Williamsburg for a combined $28.5 million, setting the 55,000-square-foot landmark banking hall at about $145 per square foot while the 95,000-square-foot office base went for about $216. Diamond Realty Investments, Mitsubishi Corporation's real estate arm, sold the office portion at 277 South Fifth Street—the base of the 23-story, 177-unit tower—for $20.5 million and the restored hall at 209 Havemeyer Street for $8 million, according to a source with knowledge of the deal and city records.

The buyers, Joel Teitelbaum and Shimon Brach, own residential and commercial property across New York City and took the assets through Dime Commercial Holdings and Dime Retail Holdings. They used a $20 million acquisition loan from Levon Capital, leaving roughly $8.5 million of their own money in the deal; CBRE's Daniel Kaplan led the brokerage team for the seller, and the buyers had no broker.

Dime Community Bank ended the 1908 bank's branch run in 2016, then sold the building, two adjacent parcels, and the air rights above to developers Tavros Capital and Charney Companies for $80 million. The developers completed The Dime in 2020, preserving the banking hall and building the Fogarty Finger-designed tower behind and above it with a $150 million construction loan. Commercial Observer reported in 2022 that NH Investments & Securities was under contract to buy The Dime for $157.5 million, but the office and retail pieces were excluded from that contract.

At those prices, the office closed at about $216 per square foot and the banking hall at about $145—a roughly $70 gap that puts the higher value on the office and prices the landmark hall for what a buyer can turn it into. A source familiar with the plan said entertainment- or hospitality-related tenants seem likely for the hall, which leaves the fit-out work ahead of the buyers.

That is the operator's trade: buy the landmark at a discount, put the higher-priced office behind the $20 million loan, and build returns on the leasing plan. It fits the pattern this publication has argued as operators take the trade in the closing cheap-buying window. If entertainment or hospitality tenants land, the $8 million banking hall will look like the bargain of the two pieces.