The Woolworth Building, the neo-Gothic Manhattan skyscraper that was once the world’s tallest building and a symbol of American capitalism, may soon gain Italian owners.
Sorgente Group is in talks with the owners to acquire a 51 percent stake, Chief Executive Officer Valter Mainetti said in an interview. Sorgente owns a stake in the Flatiron Building downtown. A group including the Witkoff Group Inc. and investor Rubin Schron owns the Woolworth Building.
“We are in talks on two or three properties in New York, of which I can name only one: the Woolworth Building,” Mainetti said at Sorgente’s headquarters in Rome.
Overseas investors are jumping into Manhattan’s office market as prices fall and landlords struggle to refinance debt. The median price for New York office properties fell 62 percent in the first nine months of this year, according to brokerage Massey Knakal Retail Services. International buyers have accounted for more than half of the $2.27 billion in New York office deals this year, according to data from property research firm Real Capital Analytics.
“There is a thought process going around the world right now that the US is a tremendous countercyclical play,” said Dan Fasulo, managing director for Real Capital.