BY MICHAEL EWING

Yerman & Associates will be moving its headquarters down the street from 401 Broadway to 225 Broadway. The new office will occupy 15,000 square feet in the building in the Financial District.

"Yerman & Associates has been at 401 Broadway since the inception of the firm and over time had expanded into noncontiguous offices on one floor." said Mitchell Waldman of Cogent Realty Advisors. "There has been substantial growth and they are moving into a brand new state-of-the-art office at 225 Broadway."

"[The building] sits very close to the Fulton Street transit hub which is important for accessibility to clients, primarily Chinese immigrants seeking visas and naturalization."

The law firm specializes in deportation defense, immigrant and non-immigrant visa processing, naturalization, corporate and business immigration, and federal litigation. Gary Yerman found the firm in 2002 and has serviced thousands of clients that include individuals as well as Fortune 500 companies.

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BY MICHAEL EWING

Amerigroup will consolidate their offices across the city into a new 165,000 square foot headquarters at 14 Wall Street.

The move comes after a recent acquisition of one of the largest Medicaid managed care companies in New York, Health Plus, and the desire to consolidate their multiple offices.

Amerigroup currently occupies a 50,000 square foot office at 21 Penn Plaza and two facilities in Brooklyn. The new lease, set to start at turn of the new year, will occupy the 11th, 12th, 14th, 21st, and 22nd floors in 14 Wall Street.

"We engaged in a lengthy process to identify a building that was geographically optimal for consolidation of the former HealthPlus and Amerigroup offices," said Zev Holzman, corporate managing director at Studley and broker on the deal, in a prepared statement. "Ultimately, 14 Wall Street, across from the stock exchange, proved to be ideal location and provided excellent growth opportunities and flexibility over the long-term."

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BY CARL GAINES

Rosewood Realty recently represented both the seller and the buyer of a multifamily building that traded in Astoria Queens.

The property, 30-60 29th Street—a 55,373-square-foot, six story elevator building—sold for $15.95 million, or approximately $209,868 per unit. The buyer was Grouper LLC, a local family owner of similar properties.

“For Queens, it was probably one of if not the nicest buildings I’ve ever seen,” said Aaron Jungreis, president of Rosewood. “It was that clean. The seller was a fund and they really ran it that well. It’s just a beautiful building—a classic Tudor construction and I think the buyer felt he was paying a pretty good number as far as the seller was getting but it’s such high quality.” Mr. Jungreis added that interest in Astoria has grown over the years, making the building all the more attractive.

The buyer is a family investor in Queens, which owns other buildings in the borough, as well as in Brooklyn and Manhattan. “They’re just going to maintain it—there’s really nothing to do,” Jungreis said when asked about plans to renovate or upgrade. “That’s why the price is so high. It really is a heck of a price per unit. I think it’s something that they’re going to give to their kids.”

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BY DANIEL GEIGER

Brookfield Properties has completed a $270 million refinancing of Four World Financial Center, the 1.9 million square foot office tower it owns as part of the World Financial Center Complex in Lower Manhattan.

The deal was done by a group of banks a source said, including Deutsche Bank, which is listed in city records as providing the loan but was part of a syndicate according to the source. The source said Deutsche Bank provided a quarter of the debt, about $68 million.

Late last year, Brookfield reached an agreement to consolidate its ownership of Four World Financial Center, buying a 49 percent interest that was held by Bank of America and its subsidiary Merrill Lynch, which is also a tenant in the building. In that deal, Brookfield agreed to pay $264 million for the bank’s stake and assume debt so that it could gain full control of the tower, whose base it is renovating as part of a sweeping makeover of the complex’s retail and public space.

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