Iberia Tavern & Restaurant at 80-84 Ferry St. in Newark — Courtesy: Tom Bergeron/ROI-NJ
By Joshua Burd
A development group has acquired the site of Newark’s famed Iberia Tavern & Restaurant and several surrounding lots, where it now hopes to build more than 2,000 residential units and a bustling restaurant row in the heart of the city’s Ironbound district.
The assemblage, which spans just over five acres fronting Ferry and Market streets, changed hands in a roughly $40 million deal, providing a high-profile development opportunity just two blocks from Penn Station. Sources familiar with the deal say affiliates of the Sinai Equity Group purchased the sites from the Loureiro and Fernandes families, the longtime owners of the distinctive Portuguese restaurant, who are set to retire and served their last meals to the public earlier this week.
Its new owners currently have an application pending before Newark’s planning board, reportedly with plans to build apartment buildings between five and 13 stories and ground-floor restaurant and retail space. According to ROI-NJ, the group envisions a streetscape that evokes a downtown in Brazil or Portugal, reflecting the existing culture and nightlife for which the Ironbound is known.
“For me, it’s the biggest community development opportunity that we’ve had thus far,” said Frank Giantomasi, an attorney and member of Chiesa Shahinian & Giantomasi PC, who represented the sellers as legal counsel.
CBRE’s Gil Medina brokered the transaction and sourced the buyer on the sellers’ behalf, noting that they had acquired the surrounding parcels during their decades of operating Iberia. Newark insiders have long touted the site as the largest piece of contiguous property ever offered for sale in the Ironbound, noting that it has drawn interest from a range of investors in recent years.
Ultimately, the buyer was a group that had already planted a flag in Newark, having purchased the well-known 497,000-square-foot IDT building at 520 Broad St. last summer.
“It was just finding the right buyer at the right time,” said Medina, an executive vice president with CBRE. “I think that combination came together, and the buyer was able to close.”
He added: “The city of Newark has been very supportive of development of this nature because it’s going to bring pedestrian traffic to an important part of the central business district.”
Calvin W. Souder, a partner with Souder, Shabazz, & Woolridge who represents the buyer and would-be developer, told ROI-NJ that “we’re trying to make the first floor reminiscent of if you were in downtown Lisbon or downtown Rio,” adding: “There’s an active call out to restaurants in both Brazil and Portugal to see if they’d be willing to open up restaurants here.”
