A secretive billionaire and heir to a foam-cup fortune is buying something many other investors are running away from: a Manhattan office tower.
Ken Dart, who renounced his U.S. citizenship nearly 30 years ago and is believed to be the biggest landowner in the Cayman Islands, is in contract to buy the former AIG headquarters in the Financial District for $252 million, sources told The Real Deal.
His Dart Enterprises is buying the 31-story office tower at 175 Water Street from the Vanbarton Group.
It’s one of the few office buildings to trade recently as buyers have been scared off by rising interest rates and concerns over hybrid work.
Representatives for Dart Enterprises and Vanbarton did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
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Inside Metro Loft's new design for 175 Water Street
The building at 175 Water served as the headquarters of AIG for more than 20 years before the insurance giant sold it for $270 million in 2019 to Nathan Berman’s Metro Loft Management, which planned to convert the top half of the 684,000-square-foot tower into residential after AIG’s lease expired 2021.
The developer later released renderings showing a sleek modern lobby and retail pavilion with a renovation scheduled to be completed this year.
But Metro Loft fell behind on its mortgage. Berman financed his acquisition with a $170 million loan from the Blackstone Group and a mezzanine loan from Vanbarton. The developer defaulted on the mezzanine loan earlier this year and Vanbarton took control of the tower.
Vanbarton hired a team at JLL to market the property for sale.
Ken Dart is the grandson of William F. Dart, who in 1937 founded a small machine shop in Mason, Michigan, according to the Dart website. The firm later became Dart Container, of which Ken Dart became president in 1986.
New Yorkers might remember Dart Container for its years-long but ultimately unsuccessful legislative and legal effort to stop the city from banning plastic-foam takeout containers.
Dart left the U.S. in 1994 to avoid taxes, the New York Times reported. He stepped down from the family firm in 2014 to focus on real estate development.
Cayman Island residents compared him to “Batman, Howard Hughes, a Bond villain and both Warren and Jimmy Buffett,” the Times wrote.