Chelsea Art Museum buildingThe Chelsea Art Museum is about to be replaced by Hewlett-Packard, which has special plans for the building. According to the New York Post, the tech firm signed a 10-year lease for the entire 34,500 feet inside the three-story museum building at 556 West 22nd Street near 11th Avenue. HP would not disclose the plans. The museum will remain in the building until Jan. 1.

CBRE brokers Pat Murphy and Jenny Ogden represented HP in the transaction, while a Murray Hill Properties team led by Jesse Rubens represented the owners. [more]

Clockwise from top left: Rockwood Capital CEO Edmond Kavounas, Crown Acquisitions CEO Stanley Chera, 530 Fifth Avenue, Murray Hill Properties CEO Norman Sturner and Jamestown Properties managing director Matt BronfmanA partnership of Jamestown Properties and Rockwood Capital is providing equity to Murray Hill Properties and Crown Acquisitions for their previously reported $390 million purchase of 530 Fifth Avenue. The Wall Street Journal reported Jamestown and Rockwood will be the controlling equity holders.

The four firms are putting about $200 million in equity into the purchase and taking out about $220 million in debt. Crown is slated to manage leasing the retail space in the building, which is occupied by Fossil Store and LensCrafters, and will soon be home to a Syms. [more]

Howard Michaels in his office at 560 Lexington Avenue last month.From the October issue: Thirty-four years ago, Howard Michaels was knocking on doors in the 2.3 million-square-foot Starrett-Lehigh office building, hawking copy machines for the 3M Company.

“I was making bupkis,” Michaels recalled.

Those days are undoubtedly over. In 2004, he arranged a $219 million recapitalization of that same building, earning a seven-figure commission for his company, a real estate investment advisory firm known as the Carlton Group.

[more]

From left: Brothers Meyer Chetrit and Joseph Chetrit; Moinian Group CEO Joseph Moinian; Murray Hill Properties CEO Norman Sturner and 530 Fifth Avenue

Crown Acquisitions and Murray Hill Properties have partnered to purchase 530 Fifth Avenue for $390 million from the Chetrit Group and the Moinian Group, the Wall Street Journal reported. The 26-story, 500,000-square-foot building between 44th and 45th streets was bought for $210 million by Joseph Moinian and the Chetrit family in 2004.

The building has 21,790 square feet of retail space on Fifth Avenue, currently occupied by LensCrafters, Chase bank and Fossil. This summer Moinian and the Chetrits expanded the retail space to include part of the second floor in order to accommodate forthcoming tenant Syms. [more]

One Park Avenue

From the July issue: “‘We are going to have a gun to our head,’” one real estate insider recalled top Vornado Realty Trust executive Glen Weiss saying, once the office giant decided to
go ahead with its acquisition of One Park Avenue.
In order to buy and recapitalize the building, Vornado had only weeks to nail down a large lease expansion with NYU Langone Medical Center, pay off mezzanine lenders, secure the first mortgage lender, and work out a deal with Murray Hill Properties and Cerberus Capital Management, the property’s owners.
It was sometime in January of this year, according to sources, that Vornado got serious about acquiring the building, which was underwater, as many Midtown properties were. One Park had been purchased at the peak of the market in 2007 by Murray Hill and Cerberus for $550 million. [more]

Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim, the world’s richest man and the newly-minted owner of the Duke Semans Mansion on Fifth Avenue, has picked up another feted Manhattan abode, according to the Post. The five-story Felissimo Townhouse at 10 West 56th Street, once home to actress Elizabeth Taylor and her third husband, Michael Todd, will now be home to the New York operations of Slim’s Grupo Carso. The conglomerate purchased the limestone property, which was listed for $18 million with Prudential Douglas Elliman’s Faith Hope Consolo and Joseph Aquino, through an affiliated LLC for $15.5 million in cash. [more]

A deal to save Murray Hill Properties’ tower at 1180 Sixth Avenue has been completed.

The property, between 46th and 47th streets, was almost foreclosed upon when the Shorenstein Group, a mezzanine loan holder, bought the equivalent of the B-note for the property and started foreclosure proceedings, Norman Sturner, CEO of Murray Hill Properties told the New York Observer. Thankfully, a mystery Asian investor stepped in to rescue Murray Hill Properties’ prized tower. [more]

Atlanta-based global investment firm Invesco and its operating partner, Adellco, signed a contract to buy Gramercy Park residential building the Elektra for $125 million, two industry sources said.

Invesco and Adellco agreed in January to buy the 32-story high-rise from a partnership that also includes Adellco and is led by a J.P. Morgan Investment Management fund, the sources said. J.P. Morgan bought the building in 2006 for $92.5 million. This past December, investment sales firm Holliday Fenoglio Fowler began marketing the 166-unit building located at 290 Third Avenue, between 22nd and 23rd streets, which it said was 97 percent occupied, an article from commercial trade publication Real Estate Alert said. [more]

From left: 1180 Sixth Ave., Norman Sturner, president of Murray Hill Properties, and Howard Michaels of the Carlton GroupHoward Michaels has saved the day at 1180 Sixth Avenue, bringing in an anonymous Chinese investor to bail out the owners before a planned foreclosure auction by mezzanine debt holder Shorenstein Properties, according to the Post. Norman Sturner’s Murray Hill Properties and the Carlyle Group had defaulted on their mortgage payments in January after buying the 23-story property, between 46th and 47th streets, for $300 million at the height of the market. Shorenstein filed to foreclose late last month. [more]

1 Park Avenue and, from top, Scott Rechler of RXR and Norman Sturner of Murray Hill Properties (building photo source: PropertyShark)

Vornado Realty Trust spent a total of $180 million to recapitalize and gain control of the 925,000-square-foot office building 1 Park Avenue from Norman Sturner’s Murray Hill Properties, which was in danger of losing the property to lenders.

The cash infusion included about $30 million in tenant improvement costs and other reserves, while at the same time Vornado secured $250 million in debt from a major investment bank, a person familiar with the deal, which closed last night, said. Murray Hill retained a small portion of the equity on the 20-story building located between 32nd and 33rd streets, the source said.

The original capital stack was comprised of a $375 million first mortgage, $100 million in mezzanine debt held by three companies and $120 million in equity. [more]