From left: the Printing House condo and Taconic co-CEOs Paul Pariser and Charles Bendit

[Updated at 5:05 p.m. with information on who the developers were in talks with] Taconic Investment Partners has filed a $4.38 million lawsuit against the developers of the West Village’s Printing House condominium, alleging they were used as a “stalking-horse bidder” on a deal to buy 104 unsold units, when the true intent was to find a more lucrative deal.

Taconic, in a suit filed in Manhattan Supreme Court April 18, alleges that the developers, Mountbatten Equities, led by investors Winthrop Chamberlin and Barnet Liberman, offered the units at 421 Hudson Street for $77 million, but allegedly moved on to another bidder, after several weeks of negotiations.

“During the negotiations, defendants and Mountbatten’s exclusive agent represented to Taconic that all material terms had been agreed to and Mountbatten was committed to consummating a deal with plaintiffs,” wrote Taconic’s attorney, Janice Mac Avoy of Fried Frank, who alleged in court papers that Taconic was preparing to close the deal. “In fact,” she wrote, “defendants did not have any intention of selling the condominium units to plaintiff.” [more]

By Yaffi Spodek, Candace Taylor and Amy Tennery

After a mid-winter lull, The Real Deal is back in the swing of things, hitting up the week’s most exciting real estate events. We quizzed the experts at the Young Jewish Professional’s networking event, including Ilan Bracha, the New York Keller Williams franchise honcho who recently defected from Prudential Douglas Elliman, Crown Acquisitions CEO Stanley Chera, and Charles Bendit, the Taconic Investment Partners CEO, whose company recently sealed a $1.8 billion deal with Google. Also, we mingled at Soho rental building 55 Thompson’s cocktail mixer and caught up with Elizabeth Stribling, founder of Stribling & Associates, at the Brooklyn Roundtable, where she gave us the scoop on her move out of Manhattan. Click here to see more. [more]

M&T Bank has reached a tentative agreement to sell the former Verizon tower at 375 Pearl Street to a joint venture of YoungWoo & Associates and Seattle’s Sabey for over $100 million, sources told the Wall Street Journal. Verizon sold the 32-story tower, widely considered one of the city’s worst eyesores, for $172.5 million in 2007 to Taconic Investment Partners, which had planned to wrap the gray façade in glass and renovate the 700,000-square-foot property into a modern office tower. But those plans never materialized, and M&T took control of the mostly-empty building last year after Taconic defaulted on its mortgage payments. [more]

Google has closed on 111 Eighth Avenue, according to sellers Taconic Investment Partners and Jamestown Properties. Although the sellers declined to comment on the closing price, a source with knowledge of the deal told The Real Deal that the previously reported figure of $1.77 billion was accurate. Google paid all-cash for the 2.9 million-square-foot Chelsea building, located between 15th and 16th streets, where it will occupy about 550,000 square feet. TRD

Google signed a contract yesterday to buy its 111 Eighth Avenue New York City home for $1.8 billion in the largest commercial real estate purchase by a tenant in U.S. history, according to the Post. The company put down “serious money,” though not a full 10 percent deposit, accordng to sources. Google currently has 500,000 square feet of the 3 million-square-foot property between 15th and 16th streets, where Nike WebMD and Sprint also reside, but is said to be planning to “gobble up the [other current tenants'] space like Pac-Man,” when their leases are up, as one source put it. 1 Comment

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Bankrupted St. Vincent’s Hospital is already looking to unload some of
its Greenwich Village real estate. The New York Times reported that 555 Sixth Avenue, also known as Staff House, is set to
officially hit the market today with Grubb & Ellis. St. Vincent’s has
long been trying to sell the 180,000-square-foot property, and as of
last Wednesday, Taconic Investment Partners is in contract to buy the building for $48
million. Any other prospective buyer would have to offer more than
$49.37 million, according to court documents. [more]

Top to bottom: the current BankNote building and a rendering of the potential outcome of the redevelopment

Taconic Investment Partners is moving in a new direction with its project at Hunts Point’s landmarked BankNote building. Taconic, along with Denham Wolf Real Estate Services, has made a multi-million dollar commitment to transform one of the South Bronx’s most iconic buildings into an epicenter of higher education, in an underserved community. The century-old structure is one of the largest in the South Bronx and is an enduring landmark in a neighborhood dominated by new structures. It was there that current Bronx Borough President Ruben Diaz chose to have his inaugural reception. “It’s a little bit of a departure from what we’ve done,” said Charles Bendit, co-CEO of Taconic. Bendit has teamed up with Paul Wolf, president of Denham Wolf, a non-profit real estate group. Bendit said on top of the $32 million they spent purchasing the BankNote commercial building at 890 Garrison Avenue in 2007, the development team plans to pour another $50 million into the project to transform portions of the building into educational use. [more]

New York City-based real estate companies have increased their Washington lobbying expenditures by more than a quarter this year, as the industry battles a severe downturn and Congress considers a raft of transformative legislation, federal data shows. Eleven city-based firms such as Tishman Speyer Properties, Forest City Ratner and Arverne East Development, together spent a total of $655,000 in the first six months of the year, compared with $510,000 in the same period a year ago, an increase of 28 percent, according to The Real Deal’s analysis of public lobbying records released this month. The companies made the lobbying expenditures for a variety of reasons, including monitoring transportation, economic development and tax issues. The quarterly reports are filed with the Senate Office of Public Records by the lobbying firms to show how much they have been paid by their clients and for what purpose. [more]