The new owners of the W New York-Union Square hotel threw the troubled property into bankruptcy protection Tuesday afternoon, the day before senior lender DekaBank was scheduled to auction off a loan on the hotel.
LEM Mezzanine, a Philadelphia-based private equity fund, previously bought the 270-room property in December for $2 million, plus the assumption of $212 million in debt, in a so-called mezzanine foreclosure auction. The W, located at 201 Park Avenue South, was auctioned off after the Dubai financial crisis left Isithmar, the private equity arm of state-controlled Dubai World, scrambling to sell assets. “Efforts to restructure the remaining mezzanine debt have not yet been completely successful,” LEM said in a statement. “Today’s filing was intended to provide additional time to complete that process, and emerge with a healthy balance sheet that allows the hotel to continue to thrive in a competitive marketplace.” Comments

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Istithmar World Capital, the investment arm of the Dubai government, has defaulted on its $300 million mortgage on the former Knickerbocker Hotel site in Times Square and turned the property over to its lender. Istithmar had been planning to convert the site’s 300,000-square-foot office building back into a high-end hotel, and now that Dubai is out of the picture, vulture investors are reportedly chomping at the bit to take the helm at a steep discount. The lender, Danske Bank A/S, hired Jones Lang LaSalle to market the property, and the brokerage’s Ben Singer said interest has been high. One such interested bidder is said to be Sitt Asset Management, which owned the building before Istithmar bought it in 2006. Istithmar had stopped renewing leases in the office building there, known as 1466 Broadway, and had also purchased an adjacent vacant lot for $76 million, as part of its hotel conversion plan. The building is now almost 50 percent vacant, according to research firm CoStar. Dan Fasulo, managing director for Real Capital Analytics, said the property would be best-used as a hotel. He said the first mortgage note is valued at $290 million, though the property could be worth less than that because it is in need of renovations. [WSJ]

W New York – Union Square hotel

LEM Mezzanine, a Philadelphia-based private equity fund, acquired Istithmar’s former W New York – Union Square hotel for $2 million, plus the assumption of $212 million in debt, in a foreclosure auction held in Manhattan this morning, marking the first major asset to be sold since the November debt crisis emerged in Dubai. LEM bagged the troubled property at 201 Park Avenue South after a brief bidding war in which Istithmar officials tried to buy the 270-room hotel on the condition that they not have to assume the hotel’s October and November debt payments. Sources at the auction told The Real Deal that the hotel would continue to operate under the W brand, while LEM would make an undisclosed amount of capital improvements and position the hotel for an eventual recovery of the New York economy. “Despite the recent downturn of the hotel industry, and the defaults that led to today’s foreclosure auction, we are optimistic about the future,” LEM’s affiliate company said in a statement. [more]