AT long last, there’s an investment-sale offering that might finally put some juice back into the market.
Sources said Swiss banking giant UBS is quietly selling its 49 percent stake in 299 Park Ave., the 1.16 million square-foot, black-glass tower between 48th and 49th streets near the Waldorf-Astoria.
UBS is a major tenant in the tower with over 750,000 square feet. What it’s planning to sell is not a specific set of floors, however, but rather its ownership interest in the entire property. Managing partner Fisher Brothers holds 51 percent.
Sources said a CB Richard Ellis team of Robert Alexander and Pat Murphy, along with Darcy Stacom and Bill Shanahan, will be fielding offers for UBS. CBRE would not comment.
A dealmaker familiar with the 299 Park Ave. situation but not involved in it speculated, “This could be the one that pries open the market again. After the peanuts paid for 1540 Broadway and the fact that Deutsche Bank doesn’t seem able or willing to unload Worldwide Plaza, a decent number for a big piece of 299 Park would help restore a sense of value.”
Deutsche recently changed its mind about selling Worldwide for somewhere in the mid-$300s a square foot range.
But while the pyramid-topped Eighth Avenue giant will soon be half vacant, 299 Park Ave. is fully leased until 2018, leading our source to say, “It’s like buying a bond. It will go for under $700 a square foot and you’d have a 7-plus cap rate going in.”
It couldn’t be learned what rent UBS is paying on the floors it occupies. The Consulate General of Japan recently renewed its lease on 53,000 square feet in the building for $70 a foot, Crain’s reported, and several lower-floor sublet availabilities are listed at $60 a foot.
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BTG Investments, a Brazil-based global partnership specializing in risk management, is expanding in Manhattan.
The firm will leave 623 Fifth Ave. for 31,401 square feet in a direct lease at Boston Properties’ 601 Lexington Ave., the prism-topped skyscraper at East 53rd Street formerly known as Citicorp Center.
(Coincidentally, BTG is buying UBS Pactual, a Brazilian banking unit, from UBS this month for $2.5 billion — a move unrelated to UBS’ sale offering at 299 Park Ave.)
The tenant was repped by CB Richard Ellis’ Scott Bogetti and Newmark Knight Frank’s Brian Goldman; the landlord by Jones Lang LaSalle’s Frank Doyle.
Terms were not disclosed, but the asking rent was $90 a square foot. The eight-year lease is on the 57th floor of the 59-story, 1.6 million square-foot trophy.
Boston’s New York leasing honcho, Andrew Levin, called the deal “exciting,” as it follows recent capital improvements that included relocating the office lobby to Lexington Avenue from East 53rd Street, a step that helped differentiate the office portion from its retail spaces.
Levin noted that no other major building has a 601 address, “so we have a unique identity.”
He said only one floor in the tower is available.
As we first reported, law firm Kirkland & Ellis recently expanded there by 120,000 square feet.
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Not all small-building sales are created equal.
One more interesting than most is this month’s $6.3 million purchase of long vacant 4 E. 43rd St. by an entity called Mr. Van Pok.
The spooky-looking, six-story address with 11,450 square feet will be redeveloped as a boutique hotel after $2-plus million in capital work, according to Conquest Advi sors’ Slater B. Traaen, who represented the seller, a local investor, along with Conquest’s Jaf Glazer. ‘Prudential Douglas Elliman repped the buyer. The city’s Finance Department records show the property last changed hands in 2006 for $5.5 million.
But who’s Mr. Van Pok?
Not a he, but an it, as it turns out — an outfit that manufactures promotional gifts for liquor companies. Think of a piggy bank shaped like Captain Morgan and you get the idea.
The firm, officially known as Van Pok & Chang, is owned by Omega Chang, who invests in small properties and had his eyes on 4 E. 43rd St. for years.
“It’s a strange building,” Traaen said of the Gothic-like structure sandwiched between two towers.