Saint Laurent is opening a new store in the Meatpacking District.

The French fashion house signed a lease for 13,000 square feet at Aurora Capital Associates and William Gottlieb Real Estate’s Gansevoort Row, the landlords announced.

Saint Laurent will occupy the ground, second floor and lower level of the building at 70-04 Gansevoort Street. The store is expected to open next year.

The financial terms of the deal weren’t disclosed, but the asking rents on the block range from $500 to $700 per square foot.

Gansevoort Row is a nine-building retail strip between Greenwich and Washington streets that Aurora and William Gottlieb teamed up to redevelop in 2015. 

Both are major landowners in the trendy shopping neighborhood, having also teamed up on projects like the Studio Gang Architects-designed Solar Carve office building at 40 Tenth Avenue, and the retail development at 21-27 Ninth Avenue, another Meatpacking retail development that’s home to Sephora and the celebrity-packed Catch NYC seafood restaurant.

Aurora is also planning another major redevelopment at the 50,000-square-foot office and retail building at 24 Ninth Avenue, along with David Ellis Real Estate.

Nationwide, retail has been performing well while other commercial real estate sectors like office and multifamily are struggling.

Saint Laurent already has two stores in New York: one at 3 East 57th Street off of Fifth Avenue and the other at 80 Greene Street in SoHo.

Aurora’s Jake Bank and Jared Epstein represented the ownership in-house, while Cushman & Wakefield’s Mike O’Neill negotiated on behalf of Saint Laurent.

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A lawsuit from veterans challenging leases by West L.A.’s Department of Veterans Affairs’ campus to UCLA and a private school in favor of new housing for homeless vets could possibly go to trial.

U.S. District Judge David Carter denied motions to dismiss key parts of a class-action lawsuit that seeks to declare the leases illegal and force the VA to expedite housing for thousands of homeless veterans at 11301 Wilshire Boulevard, the Los Angeles Times reported.

The lawsuit, filed last fall, seeks an order giving the VA six months to create 1,200 new homes on the nearly 400-acre West Los Angeles campus and lease another 2,500 apartments within a five-mile radius, plus provide supportive services.

The judge’s tentative ruling this week came after arguments by lawyers representing the veterans and the VA had caused him to “rethink the entire jurisprudence.” He gave the parties until Sept. 29 to respond to the tentative ruling before he makes it final.

The split decision, if made final, would dismiss several parts of the case based on jurisdiction, but retain two major allegations.

Carter wrote that he was inclined to uphold the veterans’ contention that the VA has a fiduciary duty to “evaluate management of leases or land use to ensure that they advance the purpose of providing housing and services that principally benefit veterans and their families.”

He would allow the veterans to pursue their cause of action alleging that leases to the Brentwood school and a company that operates a public parking lot breach that duty, outlined in the West Los Angeles Leasing Act of 2016.

Carter dismissed other claims that several easements over the property for utilities and transportation violate the act.

If adopted, the ruling could lead to a trial over whether to invalidate leases under which UCLA and the Brentwood Academy have built sprawling athletic facilities on VA land.

Zachary Avallone, trial attorney for the U.S. Justice Department, argued the leases served veterans by giving them exclusive access to facilities at specified times. Carter’s tentative ruling rejected that argument.

“Under a common-sense reading of the statute, leases for a private school’s athletic facilities and a parking lot for the general public are not designed to ‘principally benefit veterans and their families,’ even if veterans marginally benefit from these agreements,” Carter wrote.

Carter wrote that the federal government was granted the land in 1888 with the stipulation it “locate, establish, construct and permanently maintain” a branch of the National Home for Disabled Volunteer Soldiers, which constituted a charitable trust to provide housing for the disabled veterans.

When Congress passed the West Los Angeles Leasing Act of 2016, he wrote, it assumed the government’s duty to enforce that trust.

Carter urged both parties to work out a deal to avoid a trial, but said he would schedule one for early next year if they don’t. 

The lawsuit reprises an earlier one that ended with a 2015 agreement by the VA to build 1,200 units of housing on the 388-acre campus with a commitment to complete more than 770 by the end of last year. Only 54 of those units were completed.  To date, 233 are available to vets.

— Dana Bartholomew

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The Milton family, real estate developers and investors, scooped up an apartment complex in Sunrise for $28.9 million. 

Coral Gables-based J. Milton & Associates bought the Shamrock of Sunrise at 4001 North Pine Island Road from Lloyd Jones, according to records and real estate database Vizzda.  The deal breaks down to $243,200 per unit. 

Completed in 2005, the complex consists of four four-story buildings with 119 units on 7.2 acres. 

Shamrock at Sunrise has one- to four-bedroom apartments, with monthly rents from $1,904 to $3,699, Apartments.com shows. 

Dallas-based Lloyd Jones had paid $20 million for the complex in 2018, according to records. Led by Chris Finlay, the firm is a developer and investor with $750 million in assets under management, mainly in multifamily, senior housing and hotels, its website shows. 

Last year, Lloyd Jones paid $92 million for The Vibe Miami Apartments, a 194-unit building at 700 Southwest First Street in Miami’s Little Havana neighborhood. 

J. Milton is led by brothers Joseph, Cecil and Frank Milton. Their late father, José Milton, a Cuban immigrant of Lebanese heritage, founded the firm shortly after moving to Miami in 1962, according to the philanthropic Jose Milton Foundation. 

J. Milton has developed more than 50,000 residential units and has a net worth of over $2 billion, according to its website. The firm’s projects include the Parque Towers at 300-330 Sunny Isles Boulevard in Sunny Isles Beach. 

The Sunrise purchase comes amid a pickup of multifamily investment sales in South Florida, following a dropoff due to higher interest rates. Firms still buying properties tend to rely on their discretionary funds and avoid expensive financing. 

Records show J. Milton didn’t take out a mortgage for the Shamrock at Sunrise. 

This month, San Francisco-based Stockbridge dropped $156 million for the Park 82nd Apartments at 8255 Park Boulevard in Miami-Dade County’s Fontainebleau neighborhood. 

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Barberry Rose Management has sold a portfolio of rent-stabilized apartment units mostly in Manhattan’s Inwood neighborhood — but at a price well below what the multifamily owner paid in 2016.
The 16 properties sold to Coney Realty for $47M, a 44% discount from the $83.6M price that Barberry Rose paid for the portfolio in 2016, The Real Deal reported.
“That’s just a reflection of where the market is,” Cignature Realty’s Lazer Sternhell, who brokered the deal for both Coney Realty and Barberry Rose along with Peter Vanderpool, told The Real Deal.
The portfolio is composed of 12 buildings on opposite ends of the same…

Philip Paxson’s family said in a lawsuit that he was following Google Maps directions last year when he drove off a collapsed bridge in Hickory, N.C., plunged into a creek and drowned.

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