Chetrit pays $35M to complete purchase of old Standard Oil Building land

The Chetrit Group paid $34.925 million to buy a leasehold interest on a portion of the ground under the former Standard Oil Building at 26 Broadway in Lower Manhattan, a building it bought two years ago.

Midtown-based property investment company Chetrit Group bought the 31-story office building at the corner of Broadway and Beaver Street — as well as two out of three parcels of land under the building — in March 2007 for $225 million. But the third parcel, known as the Smathers Parcel, remained under separate ownership through a long-term lease, city property records show.

Chetrit Group closed on the purchase of the Smathers Parcel Dec. 30, after going into contract in March 2007, city records published yesterday show.

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The holder of the lease was a trust of Elmer Ellsworth Smathers, who signed a 99-year lease with Standard Oil in 1920 that was set to expire in 2019. He died in 1928.

The Standard Oil Building, built by the oil giant and mostly completed in 1926, was designated a city landmark in 1995.

It was not widely known that a portion of the property was leased, several brokers said.