A large office condominium on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx that has been turned around by a partnership of Sam Jemal of JJ Operating, Inc. of New York City

A large office condominium on the Grand Concourse in the Bronx that has been turned around by a partnership of Sam Jemal of JJ Operating, Inc. of New York City and members of his family together with James J. Houlihan and members of Houlihan-Parnes Realtors, LLC of White Plains, secured a $29-million first mortgage on the property.

The 300,000-square-foot office condominium is located at 1755 Grand Concourse and is also partly owned by Verizon, which uses two floors to house its central switching boards for all land lines in the Bronx.

James J. Houlihan, Bryan Houlihan, and Christie Houlihan of Houlihan-Parnes Realtors placed the $29-million first mortgage on the 222,637-square-foot office condominium at the property. The 10-year, non-recourse loan closed with a local bank at a fixed rate of 2.90%.

The borrower has converted the remaining six floors to an ancillary indoor parking garage on the first floor, and retail and professional office space on floors four through eight. Current tenants include: Bronx Lebanon Hospital, Safe Horizons, Post Graduate Mental Health, and Special Citizens Futures Unlimited. The borrower was represented in the transaction by Elizabeth Smith of Goldberg Weprin Finkel Goldstein, LLP and title was acquired by First American Title.

The property was acquired in February 2012 from Verizon and is the second large successful turnaround project engineered in the Bronx by the Houlihan and Jemal families.

The initial project by the Jemal-Houlihan partnership was the successful conversion of the vacant former Alexander’s/Caldor’s department store on the northwest corner of Fordham Road and the Grand Concourse into a multi-tenant retail/office building in 2001-2004. That project has been fully leased since its inception and has been a great success, re-anchoring the Fordham Road and Grand Concourse business area.

Houlihan-Parnes Realtors, LLC is a privately owned, vertically integrated commercial real estate investment and management firm that owns approximately 6 million square feet of office, retail and industrial space. The firm also owns and/or manages approximately 15,000 multifamily units.