The owners of the Marriott Marquis will get to buy the city-owned land under the Times Square hotel for a song — a mere $19.9 million, or just 10 percent of its value, under a deal signed by the city in 1998.
Comptroller John Liu yesterday revealed the little-known deal, worked out by the Giuliani administration. “The comptroller must have run out of things to audit and is now rummaging through old Giuliani files,” she said.
Liu’s auditors were conducting a routine review of the Marriott’s rent payments when they came across a 1998 revision to its lease for the land under the 2,057-room hotel, which was built in 1982.
Among the changes Marriott got the city to OK was a provision shortening the lease from its 2057 expiration date to 2017, with the agreement that the company would pay $20 million to buy the land.
Considering all the money the city would have collected over the original 75-year term of the lease, Liu estimated taxpayers are losing $345 million. He maintained that Marriott owes another $3.6 million for an interest payment it missed in 1998.
Both city officials and Marriott heatedly disputed Liu’s findings.
“The comptroller’s office did not understand the Marriott Marquis hotel deal and its audit report is wrong on all counts,” said hotel spokesman Bob Chlopak.
He said before the lease was revised, the value of the land would have been less than zero since deferred rents would have been deducted from the final appraisal price.
“Our reading is the land had a negative value of $12.7 million,” said Chlopak.
Mayoral spokeswoman Julie Wood called the audit “a joke.”