Highgate buying Gansevoort Park Avenue for nearly $200M: sources

Property would sell for close to $800K per key

From left: The Gansevoort Park Avenue, Michael Achenbaum and Mahmood Khimji (Credit: Gansevoort and Getty Images)
From left: The Gansevoort Park Avenue, Michael Achenbaum and Mahmood Khimji (Credit: Gansevoort and Getty Images)

The Khimji family-controlled Highgate is in contract to buy the Gansevoort Park Avenue NYC in NoMad for almost $200 million, or close to $800,000 per key, sources told The Real Deal.

The 19-story, 249-key upscale boutique hotel at 420 Park Avenue South is the latest in a wave of New York City hotels to trade hands after dozens of properties languished on the market in 2016 and early 2017.

The sellers – Achenbaum family’s Gansevoort Hotel Group, Tawil family’s Centurion Realty and Jeffrey Levine’s Douglaston Development – discussed putting the 214,000-square-foot property on the market over the summer. Sources said the Tawils had exercised their buy-sell option to the Achenbaums, to either prompt a buyout of the Achenbaums’ stake or jointly sell the full ownership. The Achenbaums and the Tawils each have a 45.05 percent stake, while Douglaston has a 9.9 percent interest and is part of the Achenbaums’ ownership group, sources said.

It was not immediately clear if brokers were involved. The price is said to be just shy of $200 million, sources said.

Representatives for Highgate, Centurion, Douglaston and Gansevoort Hotel Group could not be reached.

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The four-star hotel, located at the corner of East 29th Street, opened in 2010. The Gansevoort brand also includes the Gansevoort Meatpacking NYC, which opened in 2004, as well as hotels in Turks and Caicos and the Dominican Republic. Michael Achenbaum, president of Gansevoort Hotel Group, opened a luxury hotel called the Curtain in May.

Highgate has become one of the most active hotel buyers in the city. This year alone, it bought the Royalton hotel with Rockpoint Group for $55 million, the Nyma hotel with Capstone Equities for $52 million and the Affinia Manhattan NYC (now the Stewart Hotel) with Isaac Chetrit and Ray Yadidi for $217.5 million.

The Midtown-based hotel investment and management firm, founded in 1988 by Mahmood and Mehdi Khimji, has bought more than 80 hotels and owns over 24,000 hotel rooms nationwide.

Other big ongoing or recent trophy hotel deals include Gaw Capital Partners’ contract to buy the Standard Hotel for $340 million and the Sahara Group’s attempts to sell its 75 percent stake in The Plaza Hotel.  One block north of the Gansevoort Park Avenue hotel, the 189-key Mondrian Park Avenue just opened.