A real estate fund is about to begin construction on a 35-story residential rental tower on Fifth Avenue, Crain’s reported. Multi-Employer Property Trust, which last month bought the site at 309 Fifth Avenue, between 31st and 32nd streets, is the lead investor in the project, which is being developed by Urban Development Partners. The plan calls for a 122,000-square-foot property with 165 rental units and 10,400 square feet of retail. It is slated to open in September 2013.

“Currently, there is a limited pipeline of new projects,” said David Antonelli, vice president at Bentall Kennedy, Multi-Employer Property Trust’s real estate advisor. [more]

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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