YoungWoo, Sabey in tenantive deal for former Verizon tower

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. The deal would seem to make sense for Sabey, which is known for developing properties for telecommunication companies, while YoungWoo, whose principal partner was interviewed
in this month’s issue of The Real Deal, has a track record of discounted downtown acquisitions. [WSJ]