2330 Broadway, design by SLCE Architects/ Rendering by ARC Shadow

NEW YORK CITY—Welltower, Inc., a senior housing and healthcare REIT, and global real estate investment firm Hines closed on a $61 million acquisition of a development site at 2330 Broadway at 85th Street. The joint venture plans to demolish the existing 9,100 square-foot commercial structures and to build a 140,000 square-foot, 17-story senior living and memory care facility at the Upper West Side location. The sellers have been identified as 2330 Broadway LLC and 2328 Broadway LLC. Real Capital Analytics notes the seller is the Beekman Estate.

The joint venture declined to disclose the estimated construction cost at this time. However, the buyer's representative tells GlobeSt.com that the JV has possession of the building, and will start demolition in the beginning of 2019 with construction commencing in the second half the year.

This is the second Manhattan senior living complex being developed by Hines, Welltower and a passive institutional investor. 

In 2016, Hines and Welltower announced the acquisition of the site at 139 East 56th St., marketing plans as the first new purpose built Manhattan development for New York's aging demographics and underserved senior population. The 130,000 square-foot facility, named Sunrise at East 56th Street, will top out at 16 stories at the end of January and will open for residents in early 2020.

“We are proud to build on our partnership with Welltower to identify and secure excellent urban sites for the creation of extraordinary senior living communities,” says Tommy Craig, senior managing director of Hines. 

“We are very pleased to expand our partnership with Hines, which is focused on developing state-of-the-art residential senior care buildings in major urban markets like New York City,” says Tom DeRosa, CEO of Welltower. “The Upper West Side of Manhattan is a uniquely distinct neighborhood with a large population of affluent seniors yet zero supply of modern, purpose built residential care communities.”

DeRosa adds that the location of the Welltower West is in the top percentile of the demand curve for their target households.

Design and development plans are currently underway and will be announced in greater detail at a later date. But the developer, in sharing the first rendering of the project, says the development will complement and integrate with the well-established Upper West Side residential neighborhood. SLCE Architects, LLP, which also designed Sunrise at East 56th Street, will design the new facility.

Sarah Hawkins and Bevin Littlehale of Hines and John Olympitis and Talal Khan of Welltower, all in New York, led the buyers' transaction teams.

On the seller's website, the Beekman Estate provides a historical summary that in 1647, William Beekman emigrated from the Netherlands to the Dutch Colony of New Amsterdam with Governor Peter Stuyvesant, and became active in Manhattan and upstate New York real estate. It states that in 1905, the descendants of Beekman incorporated the company, and that descendants continue to own a majority of the corporation's stock. The Beekman Estate has diversified with additional properties in Westchester County, CT and NJ.