Macklowe borrows $500M against GM Building 

 
Macklowe Properties has borrowed another $500 million against the value of its prized General Motors Building, even as Harry Macklowe’s company faces financial pressure following its highly-leveraged purchase of seven Manhattan buildings for $7 billion earlier this year. 

Macklowe Properties upped its mortgage, sold by the German American Capital Corp., from $800 million to $1.3 billion, the city Department of Finance Website
revealed yesterday.

Macklowe is being squeezed by the mortgage meltdown and the tightening credit market. Some observers have speculated that Macklowe Properties would use funds from the mortgage to service debt on the buildings it bought from Blackstone Group LP in February.

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Macklowe’s public relations firm, Rubenstein Associates, declined to comment.

The borrowers paid $14 million in local taxes on the loan, the document said.

Macklowe Properties’s Fifth Avenue 58/59 Acquisition Co. bought the General Motors building, located at 767 Fifth Avenue, for $1.4 billion in 2003, then a U.S. record for an office building.