Talk about your high profile properties the Empire State Building and now a prize piece of downtown Westport in your portfolio.
The $18.1 million Westport deal closed on April 14 and today’s Hartford Courant/The Advocate of Stamford gives prominent coverage to the transaction under the headline: “Best of Westport: $1,046 a square foot.”
Reporting on the sale of the 17,282-square-foot retail building at 66-99 Main St., the Courant notes, Owning a retail building in a town where Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward and Martha Stewart live isn’t cheap.
The one-story building housing Gap, Ann Taylor and J. McLaughlin stores was sold to a partnership led by W&M Properties executives Peter L. and Anthony E. Malkin of Greenwich. They bought it from Boston-based First Westport Properties.
Last year, an investment entity owned by Peter Malkin and his father-in-law, Lawrence A. Wien, acquired the fee title to the Empire State Building after owning the buildings master lease since 1961.
Each of the 66-99 Main St. retailers has a long-term lease for their space—The Gap, with 10,521 square feet; Ann Taylor, with 3,880 square feet; and J. McLaughlin, with 2,881 square feet.
W&M Properties said the Westport purchase, through its Wien & Malkin Co-Investor Capital L.P., is the investor group’s first retail acquisition outside of Manhattan in more than a decade.
The Malkins’ commercial and office building portfolio also includes properties in Norwalk, Darien, and Stamford, New York and elsewhere.
According to the Courant, the buyer said dependable rents, high-income residents in the area and future value of the property prompted its purchase.
