Time Warner Center attracts $1.3B bids

Bids hovering around the $1.3 billion mark came in last week for the office portion of the Time Warner Center, the New York Post reported.

The top bids for the 1.1 million-square-foot tower at Columbus Circle were in the price range of $1,180 per square foot. The building has attracted the eye of global investors, including “Japanese, Chinese, sovereign-wealth funds, pension funds, equity funds, local owners, users, pension funds and REITs,” a person familiar with the bidding process told the Post.

The next owners would lease the space back to Time Warner for roughly five years, sources told the Post, allowing the media behemoth time to transition into its next headquarters. A renaming of the iconic building could also be in the cards.

“It’s a great asset, but someone will take a big, big gamble on it as they have to get rents from $100 a square foot in the base to $140 a square foot above,” Avison Young’s Greg Kraut, who advised some bidders, told the Post.

Time Warner tapped Eastdil Secured’s Doug Harmon and Adam Spies to market the building in April, while Studley CEO Mitchell Steir is overseeing the company’s 4-million-square—foot relocation and consolidation, according to the Post.

The media behemoth is preparing to leave the Time Warner Center, and is leaning toward moving to the Hudson Yards project on Manhattan’s far West Side.  [NYP]  – Hiten Samtani