From left: Stuyvesant Town, 300 Broadhollow Road and the Westin Ft. Lauderdale

Fitch Ratings yesterday downgraded a pool of commercial real estate loans
led by Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village, a Florida hotel and a
Melville, N.Y. office property.
Fitch said the $2.42 billion loan pool, sold under the name Cobalt 2007-
C2, has 57 loans of concern, representing 38 percent of the pool, and 15 of
the loans are in special servicing, representing 17 percent. The current loan
balance is $2.32 billion.
The Peter Cooper Village and Stuy Town loan represents the largest
percentage of the pool, or 10.3 percent, and remains in special servicing
under CW Capital. The 80-acre site, with more than 11,000 units, is
currently under new management with Manhattan-based Rose Associates,
which declined to comment. [more]

Stuyvesant Town

From the March issue: Tishman Speyer Properties may have suffered one of the biggest debacles of the downturn with Stuy Town and Peter Cooper Village, but the firm appears to be getting its footing back. Over the past year, the 33-year-old Manhattan-based company has gone on a spree of buying, selling, developing and leasing buildings, as well as restructuring some of its debt. Last year, the firm bought around $1.06 billion of property around the world, up from $99 million in 2009, according to the Wall Street Journal. It wasn’t just a purchaser, though: The firm sold about $1.9 billion worth of property in 2010, up from $500 million a year earlier. [more]

From left: City Council member Daniel Garodnick, Rose Associates’ Adam Rose and trees in Stuyvesant Town

Special servicer CWCaptial Asset Management is set to remove hundreds of trees from the sprawling Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village residential complex, according to the Wall Street Journal, after residents complained the greenery posed a safety threat. The trees, which former owner Tishman Speyer began planting at the 11,200-unit residential community in 2006, allowed “for somebody of ill will to hide and potentially perform a criminal act,” said City Council member Daniel Garodnick at the time. But while residents butted heads with Tishman Speyer over the arboreal plantings, Adam Rose, co-president of Stuy Town property manager Rose Associates, said he agrees with the tenants. [more]

The California Public Employees’ Retirement System, the largest U.S. public pension plan otherwise known as Calpers, is shifting its strategy away from residential real estate investments after getting badly burned on several boom-era housing deals, Bloomberg News reported. Perhaps the most infamous of those deals was Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village, in which Calpers lost a $500 million stake after the complex was turned over to creditors last year. Yesterday, the pension fund’s investment committee voted to move roughly half of its real estate investments from “higher-risk” assets like housing into commercial property, in order to avoid falling victim to real estate booms and busts in the future. [more]

Stuyvesant Town and Robert Scaglion, a senior managing director with property manager Rose Associates

Rents on nearly 600 vacant units at Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village are set to climb an average of $2,100 or more in the coming months, according to property manager Rose Associates, following the completion of an average renovation of $84,210 to each unit.

The project, set to cost roughly $48 million, according to special servicer CWCapital, which took control of the property early last year, includes the renovation of the 570 apartments in a similarly modern style to former owner Tishman Speyer, which renovated many of the units when it bought the 110-building complex for $5.4 billion in 2006, according to Robert Scaglion, a senior managing director with Rose Associates.

Scaglion said that despite the increases, which would bring rents roughly up to the market value of similar apartments, the units will remain rent-stabilized. Many of the units have rents of $900 a month, he noted, which would mean those rents would go up to roughly $3,000 a month. [more]

Financial rating firm Fitch Ratings said today the special servicer at Stuyvesant Town plans to begin the renovation of 570 vacant units at the sprawling complex on Manhattan’s East Side. (Click here to see story posted Jan. 25 for more details.) CWCapital, the special servicer at the 11,227-apartment complex located on 80 acres, formally took control of the property in October. That same month it designated property manager Rose Associates as operator of the buildings, which are 95 percent leased. (note: clarification made) TRD [more]

Rose Associates, a developer and manager of both residential and commercial real estate, has been tapped to serve as property manager for Mount Sinai Medical Center’s residential real estate holdings. The properties — including more than 1,700 apartments in various buildings across the Upper East Side — are used mostly as staff housing. The 2 million-square-foot portfolio is spread across 25 different buildings. [more]

Stuyvesant Town and City Council member Dan Garodnick

Tenants at the 11,000-unit Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village housing complex could see a rent adjustment in the coming weeks, according to Crain’s, as new owner CW Capital attempts to determine the value of the rents and how much in back rent current residents are due. With an interim agreement on rents set to expire tomorrow, figuring out rates is a top priority, according to City Council member Dan Garodnick, who has worked with CW Capital and has been a chief advocate for Stuy Town tenants. “For CW, determining the rent roll is critical to determine the value of the property,” Garodnick said. [more]

It’s no wonder hedge fund bigwig Bill Ackman put up such a fight for control of Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village: he thought he could squeeze a “$2 billion potential profit opportunity” out of a co-op conversion at the massive complex, he told attendees of the Bloomberg Link Hedge Funds 2010 Conference yesterday. Ackman’s Pershing Square Capital Management and joint venture partner Winthrop Realty put $45 million into their purchase of $300 million worth of defaulted junior debt on the property earlier this year and had attempted to foreclose. [more]

From left: James Stuckey, dean of the NYU Schack Institute of Real Estate and Michael Fascitelli, CEO of Vornado Realty Trust; Panelists from left: Larry Silverstein, Michael Fascitelli, Willliam Mack, Marc Holliday and Bill Rudin

“Sometimes being a REIT felt like being between a dog and a fire hydrant,” Vornado Realty Trust CEO Michael Fascitelli said this afternoon, reflecting on the past couple of years in the industry before a packed ballroom at the Waldorf-Astoria hotel, and pausing for effect.

But no longer.

While public real estate investment trusts suffered significant losses in the immediate aftermath of the real estate crash, they’ve bounced back with impressive vigor, Fascitelli said. Plus, he offered as proof, there were very few bankruptcies.

Speaking on a panel at NYU Schack Institute of Real Estate’s annual conference on capital markets, Fascitelli was joined by Marc Holliday, who said that life is pretty good over at SL Green right now, too. [more]