http://blogs.wsj.com/metropolis/2012/06/04/whats-the-deal-private-hudson-pier-sold/
What’s the Deal: Private Hudson Pier Sold
Highlights from Greater New York’s weekly commercial property report:
- Mark Abramson for The Wall Street Journal
- Pier 78, a private pier between 38th and 39th streets
For close to three decades, New York Waterway, an active ferry operator in the region, owned a small pier just south of the Lincoln Tunnel, one of the only private Hudson River piers in Manhattan, according to the City Planning Department.
Now New York Waterway has sold Pier 78 to another transportation company for $7.5 million. It was purchased by a limited liability corporation with ties to the Marmurstein family, which owns a number of sightseeing tour and bus lines in New York and Miami, according to Armand Pohan, chairman of New York Waterway.
The Marmurstein’s company, Twin America, runs double-decker bus sightseeing tours under the City Sights and Gray Line brands, and sightseeing cruises, which depart from Pier 78. Representatives of the Marmurstein family and Twin America couldn’t be reached for comment.
Pohan said in an interview that New York Waterway used Pier 78 for years but moved its ferries to the municipally-owned West Midtown Ferry Terminal, which opened in 2005 on the adjacent Pier 79. He said that Pier 78 will continue to be used by tourist boats.
“We do best in running boats, they market tourism much better than we do,” Pohan said of the Marmurstein family.
New York Waterway acquired the Pier 78 property in 1983 from a subsidiary of the Penn Central Transportation Co., which was operating out of bankruptcy protection at the time. The pier, which runs north-south about 65 feet and extends more than 300 feet west on the Hudson River, has been used as a ferry terminal since the 1980s.
—Alessia Pirolo