Wildflower Ltd., a frequent lessor to Amazon and the company behind Robert De Niro's Wildflower Studios project in Queens, has purchased an industrial site in the South Bronx for about $11 million. Wildflower bought the adjacent properties at 1340 Lafayette Ave., 749 Whittier St. and 745 Whittier St. in Hunts Point from a Long Island-based limited liability company, which had bought the sites for about $2.3 million in 2003, according to sources and property records. The lots span 55,000 square feet and include 110,000 buildable square feet.
Wildflower Managing Partner Adam Gordon declined to get into the specifics of the company's plans for the Bronx site, but he indicated that the firm could use it for a logistics facility, noting that Wildflower “continues to be very active in the logistics business” and that Hunts Point is “one of the most desirable logistics locations in serving New York City.”
“Over the past 12 months, we’ve seen many new entrants coming into the marketplace and acquiring sites, most of which are unsuitable for logistics use,” he said. “Not all sites and locations are equal, and we’ll likely see a trend of more discrimination in acquisitions as the market identifies suitable sites and other sites continue to sit vacant.
Robert Khodadadian and Daniel Shirazi of Skyline Properties brokered the deal for both sides. They declined to comment on the transaction.
Wildflower focuses on e-commerce and self-storage, in addition to logistics. Its other major project is Wildflower Studios, a $400 million vertical film studio based in Astoria, designed by superstar architect Bjarke Ingels and made in partnership with De Niro and producer Jane Rosenthal. The actor's son Raphael De Niro is a company partner at Wildflower.
The company signed a 211,000-square-foot lease with Amazon in November for a delivery station at 12555 Flatlands Ave. in East New York, a development known as the Brooklyn Logistics Center that Wildflower purchased for $25.3 million in 2018.
Other recent investment sales in the Bronx include a Mount Vernon-based LLC’s $14.5 million purchase of a school bus company’s headquarters at 450 Zerega Ave. in Castle Hill and Dynamic Star's $21 million purchase of a concrete plant site along the Major Deegan Expressway, which is part of its ambitious $3.5 billion Fordham Landing project in University Heights.