From left: Steve Witkoff, Ruby Schron and the Woolworth building
An Israeli investor has signed a contract to buy the top 25 floors of the Woolworth building for about $70 million, Crain’s reported. The deal comes six weeks after reports first emerged that Steve Witkoff’s Witkoff Group and Ruby Schron’s Cammeby’s International were considering a sale of the upper portion of the property, which has remained vacant for years in advance of a residential or hotel conversion. [more]
From left: Steve Witkoff, Ruby Schron and the Woolworth building
The Witkoff Group and Cammeby’s International partnership that owns the historic Woolworth building is in talks to sell the property for as much as $500 million, the New York Post reported. Steve Witkoff and Ruby Schron’s companies joined forces to purchase the 59-story, 935,633-square-foot building, at 233 Broadway near Barclay Street, for $137.5 million in 1998. [more]
The wheels are finally turning on the long-awaited conversion at the top of the Woolworth Building. According to the Post, the building’s ownership is prepared to make a decision on whether the upper portion of the building will be rental apartments or a hotel within the next 30 to 45 days. Office tenants at the 57-story landmark currently occupy floors as high up as the 27th — above that, the floors are vacant, said Steve Witkoff, CEO of the Witkoff Group and a partner in the building’s ownership group, which also includes Cammeby’s International head Ruby Schron. Floors 28 and up are also served by separate elevator banks, and permits to move the stairways and elevators on floors 30 through 47 — a $6 million project — were approved by the Department of Buildings earlier this month. [more]
From left: Heritage on Fifth, 420 East 102nd Street, 1890-1894 Lexington Avenue, and 1982-1990 Lexington Avenue (Photo source for last three images: Property Shark)One of the largest operators of affordable multi-family housing in Upper Manhattan and the boroughs is suing the city’s Department of Housing Preservation and Development for at least $4 million for lost income tied to deferred rent increases in subsidized housing vouchers at three apartment complexes in East Harlem. New Jersey-based Urban American Management, through its affiliate Putnam Holding, claims that the city agency breached a contract by delaying approval of rent increases for a special class of Section 8 subsidized housing vouchers in the three complexes. In addition, the petition filed in New York State Supreme Court Monday claims HPD bowed to pressure from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and revoked approved rent increases that were between 3 and 23 percent to the apartments with tenants holding enhanced Section 8 vouchers at the three complexes. [more]
City officials announced a $21 million deal today to renovate the Luna Park housing complex in Coney Island, under an agreement that would keep the apartments in the Mitchell Lama affordable housing program for another 20 years.
The agreement ends years of controversy about the Coney Island co-op complex. A number of shareholders at the 1,600-unit development had been actively considering a plan to go private, with some actively pushing for a feasibility study on whether to exit the Mitchell Lama program.
“It was a poignant moment for us to preserve the affordability [of Luna Park],” said one local official, who asked not to be identified.
Several other Mitchell Lama buildings in the Coney Island area have gone private in recent years, including Ocean Towers, a 360-unit development that was sold for $5.9 million to Cammeby’s International in 2007. [more]
Tenants of five
Urban America Management buildings in
Manhattan and Roosevelt Island will rally in Harlem today against
mortgage giant Fannie Mae, arguing that it has a duty to make sure the
buildings it owns loans on do not fall into states of disrepair. The
buildings, which were originally purchased by Cammeby’s International
for $295
million in 2005, were flipped to Urban America in 2007 for
$918
million. Government sponsored mortgage giant Fannie Mae owns the $700
million loan
for the buildings. Since the flip, tenants claim that the buildings
have fallen
into a state of disrepair and there has been a steady decline in
services and
maintenance. Many fear that these buildings will see the same fate of
the
Ocelot buildings in the Bronx, another portfolio of Fannie Mae’s whose
loan was sold to Deutsche Bank after conditions became so bad that
eight of the
properties are now included in a list of the 200 worst offenders in
terms of
code violations in New York City.
