From the February issue: It’s been a sort of parlor game in New York’s real estate community for
some time: speculating on whether peak-market buyers will hold on to
their highly leveraged properties.
Then, in a move that shook the industry last month, Tishman Speyer
Properties and BlackRock Realty decided to turn over the keys to the
$5.4 billion Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village.
But not everyone has gone this route. Other overextended borrowers
have kept control of their properties following a debt restructuring,
including developers Lev Leviev and Joseph Moinian.
As part of a workout — the complex process that’s often decided by
the leverage each party has in the development — the bank or private
equity firm must weigh its options.  [more]

Lev Leviev and the former New York Times Building

The former New York Times Building at 229 West 43rd Street in Times Square, on which owner Africa Israel yesterday announced it had reached a restructuring deal to reduce its debt by 60 percent, is now slated to become a mixed-use luxury center, with a 379-room high-end hotel sandwiched in the middle of a posh retail mall and bowling alley on the lower floors and 26 condo units on top. The 15-story landmark had been slated for a $170 million reinvention, but sits mostly tenantless since Africa Israel head Lev Leviev’s $525 million purchase of the property in 2007 at the height of the market. The senior lender on the building, Mexican bank Banco Inbursa, is providing a $75 million revolving loan for the new conversion, and a 50 percent stake will go to lender Five Mile Capital Partners. Bowlmor Lanes has already inked a deal with Africa Israel on the third and fourth floors, where it plans to open a 50-lane bowling alley in October, and Africa Israel said it is in talks with three investors about the purchase or lease of the fifth through eleventh floors for a hotel. [NYT]

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From the October issue: As the real estate industry scrambles to unwind billions of dollars in
distressed inventory, a number of high-profile deals are stuck in
neutral as lenders battle it out with each other to see who will get
paid and who will be left holding the (empty) bag. While creditors often turn on each other during a workout, the massive
number of securitized loans with multiple lenders and third-party
servicing firms managing the funds is creating a level of complexity
that may take years to sort out, analysts said. Unlike the previous downturn in the 1990s, the majority of large deals
during the recent real estate boom were made using securitized loans –
or at least loans with large syndicates, or groups of lenders sharing
the burden of a single loan.