Gansevoort Park Avenue could soon be hitting the market

Owners of trendy NoMad hotel are exploring buyout, sale: sources

From left: Gansevoort's Michael Achenbaum, Centurion's Ralph Tawil and the Gansevoort Park Avenue (Credit: Getty Images and Gansevoort Hotel Group)
From left: Gansevoort's Michael Achenbaum, Centurion's Ralph Tawil and the Gansevoort Park Avenue (Credit: Getty Images and Gansevoort Hotel Group)

One of New York City’s two Gansevoort-branded hotels may soon be hitting the market.

The Tawil family’s Centurion Realty is negotiating a plan with its partners to Sell The Trendy Boutique Hotel Gansevoort Park Avenue NYC in NoMad, sources told The Real Deal.

Sources familiar with the property said the Tawils recently exercised a buy-sell option to its partner, the Achenbaum family of the Gansevoort Hotel Group. The move is intended to either prompt the buyout of the Achenbaums’ stake or the partners’ jointly shopping the property’s full ownership.

A source familiar with the ownership’s equity breakdown said the Achenbaums and the Tawils each have a 45.05 percent stake, while Jeffrey Levine’s Douglaston Development has a 9.9 percent interest and is part of the Achenbaums’ ownership group.

The 19-story, 249-key hotel at 420 Park Avenue South, at the corner of East 29th Street, opened in 2010. The 214,000-square-foot property, which cost $239 million to build, secured a $160 million refinancing from Citigroup and Redwood Trust in 2012.

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Sources familiar with the hotel said it could fetch about $800 per key, or roughly $200 million – a drop in value from when the hotel market was healthier a few years ago. The owners previously considered selling the hotel, sources said, with pricing around $1.1 million per key, or about $275 million.

In addition to the Gansevoort Park Avenue NYC and the Gansevoort Meatpacking NYC, which opened in 2004, the Gansevoort brand includes hotels in the Dominican Republic and Turks and Caicos. Michael Achenbaum, president of Gansevoort Hotel Group, opened a new luxury hotel called the Curtain in May, his first European property.

A spokesperson for the Gansevoort Hotel Group said, “We are not interested in selling,” and declined to comment further.
Representatives for Centurion and Douglaston declined to comment.

Earlier this year, the Achenbaums scored a $115 million refinancing for the Gansevoort Meatpacking at 18 Ninth Avenue.  Elsewhere in the area, the Standard High Line in the Meatpacking District hit the market for sale in May.

The few Manhattan hotels to sell recently have been as conversion opportunities rather than value-add. The Kash Group and Shel Capital are planning a rental conversion of the Morgans Hotel in Murray Hill  and the LeFrak Organization is planning the same for the Dumont hotel in Kips Bay.