Kushner Companies has offered to buy the luxury co-op building at 417 Park Avenue for $250 million, a new report claims.
The co-op board at the 13-floor, 26-unit apartment building met on March 28 to discuss a “letter of interest” from Kushner offering to buy all 10,000 apartment shares, the New York Post reported.
The price breaks down to an average of $8.9 million per apartment.
Representatives from Billy Macklowe’s William Macklowe Company also approached the board, according to the Post.
Representatives for Kushner and Macklowe declined to comment.
The Emery Roth-designed building at the southeast corner of 55th Street was until recently the only residential address on Park Avenue between Grand Central Terminal and 57th Street, having survived the wave of office construction that took over the area.
It’s not impossible to buy a residential co-op from its owners, but there are challenges. Most co-ops require 100 percent of the unit owners to agree on a sale and price. But 417 Parkonly requires a 67 percent majority to green light a sale, insiders told the Post.
Several bidders in past decades have offered to buy the building, but now the Midtown East rezoning would allow a new owner to replace the property with a much larger building.
Kushner Companies, meanwhile, is in talks to buy Vornado Realty Trust’s stake at 666 Fifth Avenue, the struggling office tower that lost $25 million last year and has a $1.2 billion mortgage coming due in February.
The company is also under scrutiny from federal, state and city agencies looking into allegations of improper financing and potentially false rent stabilization filings with the city’s Department of Buildings. [NYP] – Rich Bockmann