On the market

Blackstone set to sell 1095 Sixth for $2B

Blackstone Group is gearing up to sell the Verizon building at 1095 Sixth Avenue, and the office tower may fetch one of the highest prices ever paid for a U.S. skyscraper. Blackstone tapped Eastdil Secured to market the 41-story, 1.2 million-square-foot property, Bloomberg News reported. The tower could fetch as much as $2.25 billion. Blackstone picked up the tower in 2007 as part of its $39 billion acquisition of Sam Zell’s Equity Office Properties Trust, which until that point was the largest office landlord in the U.S. The building, now known as 3 Bryant Park, counts MetLife among its tenants. Verizon Communications, which once occupied all 41 stories, is returning to part of the building in September.

Eight-garage portfolio could fetch $250M

Real estate insiders say a package of eight family-owned parking garages in prime Manhattan and Brooklyn that recently hit the market could net as much as $250 million because of their redevelopment potential. The buildings are just a portion of the large portfolio owned by the Wolf family and managed by their company, Rapid Park. The largest site is in Lower Manhattan, at 25-27 Beekman Street, and has 84,604 square feet of development rights. It is adjacent to a development site for sale by another seller, creating the potential for a buyer to grab 157,122 square feet of development rights. The other properties are in Lower Manhattan, Murray Hill, NoMad, Midtown West, the Upper West Side, Brooklyn Heights and Prospect Park. A Massey Knakal team of Chairman Robert Knakal, Jonathan Hageman and Elysa Berlin has the exclusive listing.

JPMorgan aims to unload UES tower

JPMorgan is looking to sell a recently renovated, 223-unit Upper East Side rental tower that industry experts say could fetch north of $200 million. The bank’s investment management arm is searching for a buyer for the Wimbledon, a 28-story apartment building at 200 East 82nd Street it purchased in 2008 for $150.4 million. Darcy Stacom and Paul Liebowitz at commercial brokerage CBRE have the listing. The tower was constructed in 1980, and J.P. Morgan recently invested $15 million to renovate the building’s corridors and apartments. Citibank has a 6,200-square-foot retail lease running through 2020.

Urban American lists Brooklyn, SI properties

Urban American Management, one of the city’s leading private-equity-backed real estate investment firms during the mid-2000s boom, is listing for sale a mega Brooklyn-focused apartment portfolio likely to trade for more than $200 million. The 14 buildings in Brooklyn and one garden apartment complex in Staten Island have 1,434 apartments total, with an average monthly rent of just over $1,200 for each unit, documents reviewed by The Real Deal show. The package of buildings, once owned by the Lefrak dynasty, has an estimated net operating income of just over $8 million, on gross income of about $21 million, the papers reveal. Urban American tapped Eastern Consolidated’s CEO Peter Hauspurg, Executive Managing Director David Schechtman and Director Marion Jones, to market the portfolio, which includes 2425 Nostrand Avenue in Midwood and 2862 Hylan Boulevard in Staten Island.

13-story Bed-Stuy building for sale

Gaia Real Estate is looking to sell the tallest privately owned property in Bedford-Stuyvesant. Ofer Cohen and Matt Cosentino of Brooklyn commercial brokerage TerraCRG are marketing the 27,000-square-foot building at 11 Spencer Court. The 13-story, 135-foot-tall apartment rental building is expected to fetch $13 million. Excluding public housing projects in Bed-Stuy, it is the neighborhood’s tallest. Spencer Court Holdings developed the property as a condominium building, then converted it to rentals. The property holds 23 apartments.