An Upper West Side investment on behalf of teachers’ retirement plans does not appear to have made the grade.
Nuveen, the company that manages the assets of the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association of America, or TIAA, has sold a retail site at West 83rd and Broadway for $9.8 million, according to a deed that appeared in the city register Tuesday.
In 2012 TIAA paid $44.7 million for the 15,000-square-foot berth, which has been home for years to the Upper West Side’s only branch of the Charles Schwab stock brokerage chain. The $9.8 million sale price is a nearly 80% loss on the deal, which went into contract Nov. 21 and closed Feb. 26.
The purchaser of the site, which also contains a Spectrum cable TV office and a 250-space Icon parking garage, was Namdar Realty Group, a Long Island-based investor with an extensive retail portfolio. Plans for the site, which in years past was occupied by small clothing boutiques, are unknown. Company CEO Igal Namdar had no comment by press time.
The property, a commercial condo with the address 225 W. 83rd St., hugs the base of mid-1980s condo the Bromley, a 23-story, 304-unit, block-long offering that is also home to a six-screen AMC movie theater. But the theater, tucked inside a separate commercial condo at the building, was not part of the transaction.
Long considered one of the city’s busiest retail strips, the Upper West Side stretch of Broadway has grappled with flux in recent months, as some longtime tenants have shuttered or appear at risk of doing so. Decades-old mainstay Absolute Bagels at West 108th Street closed in December, and nearby Silver Moon Bakery at West 105th is battling its landlord in a rent and lease dispute. In addition, the developer ABS Real Estate Partners is set to raze the block-long, prewar residential building lined with storefronts at West 96th Street.
But not all retail berths are staying empty. Grocery store chain Wegmans is poised to open a location at 1932 Broadway, at West 65th Street, where a Bed Bath & Beyond outpost once stood.
For its part, Schwab has eight outposts in New York, with six of them in Manhattan. An effort to reach the Schwab branch at No. 225 was unsuccessful by press time.
TIAA, meanwhile, claims more than 4.7 million customers and more than $1.3 trillion in assets under management, according to its website. In 2014 TIAA acquired Nuveen, which also holds billions of dollars in affordable housing assets. Nuveen spokesman Andrew Chironna had no comment.
