It looks like the Takashimaya Building at 693 Fifth Ave. will end up in the capable hands of Joe Sitt of Thor Equities for just north of $140 million. Our spies said Sitt was given the good news yesterday morning — and was told he had just a few days to sign a contract and deliver a substantial deposit or the building would be yanked from his clutches and handed to the next highest bidder.
As we reported earlier this month, a slew of potential buyers had been whittled down to a mere five finalists. Along with Sitt, those included Vornado Realty Trust; a group that included David Werner; Jeff Sutton with SL Green Realty; and what turned out to be watch retailer Swatch.
The slender 20-story building, on the east side of the tony block between 53rd and 54th streets, contains a mere 97,500 square feet. The pricing equates to about $1,450 a foot. Most prospective buyers had talked of leaving the bottom two or three stories as retail, with the rest turned back into boutique offices for investment-type tenants.
Nat Rockett, of Jones Lang LaSalle, who has been handling marketing for the Japanese retailer, did not return a call for comment.
Sitt, who is an active retail and mall owner in Brooklyn and in Manhattan, among other places, also did not return a call or e-mail for comment. Thor owns 10 million square feet of retail, office, hotel and residential property worth over $3 billion. The company also has a $1 billion urban fund war chest ready to invest in properties like the Takashimaya Building. He recently sold a swath of land in Coney Island to the city, enabling large-scale redevelopment plans to move forward.
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The partnership at the 386 Park Ave. South office building has been reconstituted by Anthony Westreich of Monday Properties. According to sources and public documents, Jonathan Leitersdorf and Chris Schlank‘s Savanna Partners paid $43.3 million for a stake in the 210,000-square-foot building on the northwest corner of 27th Street.
This allowed the payoff of a $37.5 million mortgage that was held by Russian metals mogul Vassily Anisimov‘s Coalco Development.
Anisimov’s daughter, Ana, is known as the Russian Paris Hilton. Ana’s playground is now Manhattan, the Hamptons and Los Angeles, where she is developing — not buildings — but perfumes.
Calls requesting comment on the building partnership were not returned.
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Sloan-Kettering Hospital has paid $10 million for an elevatored apartment building at 311 E. 54th Street that will become staff housing.
The six-story building, located between First and Second avenues, was sold by an estate. Aaron Jungreis and Michael Guttman of Rosewood Realty Group marketed the building.
The building has 41 apartments of which 39 are vacant — plus two offices that will probably be converted back to residential apartments, said Michael Gutnick, a hospital executive. Half are studios and the other half are one-bedrooms.
“This was a very attractively priced property and we will put in new kitchens and rent to graduate and post-doctoral students and younger members of our staff,” he said.
The price per unit was less than $250,000 each, making the price lower than the replacement cost and a good deal for the hospital. But the city will lose out on property taxes as the building will be tax-exempt except for the two occupied apartments.
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We’ve uncovered a few more fun facts about 11 Times Square’s 400,000-foot lease signed by SJP Properties with the law firm Proskauer Rose. While the 21-year lease ends on March 31, 2031, the law firm has an option to renew for either five or 10 years provid ing they do so by March 31, 2029.
Once that option is elected, the lawyers then have the ability to opt for a second renewal of another five or 10 years, which they can decide up to the day before the end of the first extension. Additionally, each renewal must be for at least five contiguous floors or more.
The law firm will start out with 13 floors running from 18 through 30 and have other expansion and refusal rights to rent other floors.
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We deliver for you.
Last week we told you that the US Postal Service was a deadbeat on common charges owed to two different Manhattan residential buildings in which the USPS owns its retail store unit.
The next day we received this update from USPS spokeswoman Darleen Reid-DeMeo: “As information, this statement confirms that the United States Postal Service is now current on payment [sic] for common charges at both Manhattan locations in question. We can share that changes to an internal budgeting practice resulted in a delay to these payments. We have corrected the issue and regret this incident.”