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 has tapped Eastdil Secured to market the 42-story, 1.2 million-square-foot property, sources familiar with the plans told Bloomberg News. The tower, they said, 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 up 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 of the property, is returning to the building in September.
A spokesperson for Blackstone declined to comment on plans to Bloomberg, and a spokesperson for Eastdil did not immediately return calls.
Currently, the most highly-valued office property in the country is 767 Fifth Avenue, where the families of Brazilian banking titan Moise Safra and Chinese magnate Zhang Xin bought a 40 percent stake in the building for $1.4 billion in June 2013. [Bloomberg News] — Julie Strickland