Extell’s Barnett puts West 57th building on market

Extell Development’s Gary Barnett is selling a vacant building at West 57th Street and expects to get the $80 million he paid for the property two years ago, the New York Post reported.

The developer, who has been streamlining his portfolio by selling off non-core assets, has tapped CBRE’s Darcy Stacom and Bill Shanahan to sell the five-story building at 16-18 West 57th Street. The property, just off Fifth Avenue, has 24,000 square feet and comes with 75,000 square feet of buildable air rights. “[Barnett] was getting unsolicited offers at very strong pricing, so he was tempted,” an Extell spokeswoman told the Post. 

In 2011, Barnett – whose marquee One57 commands prices of up to $45 million per floor and who was recently profiled by The Real Deal  – had outbid Sheldon Solow for the building. It seems likely that Solow would still be interested in acquiring it, given that the building is between two of his properties, 10-14 West 57th Street and 20-22 West 57th Street. Solow has kept those buildings only partially full to ensure that his office tenants at the luxury 9 West 57th Street continue to enjoy park views, some real estate insiders said. What seems more likely, however, is that Solow hasn’t developed his properties because Barnett held the missing piece of the puzzle, a strategy he has used with Vornado Realty Trust’s 220 Central Park South.

Barnett’s building would give Solow 237.5 feet of frontage and a development plot so he could build a 356,250-square-foot project, according to the Post’s calculations. [NYP] –Hiten Samtani