Barry Diller’s IAC Buys West Chelsea Land

Barry Diller’s IAC company paid $80 million to buy the land under its iconic Frank Gehry-designed West Chelsea headquarters.

The media conglomerate, which already owns the 200,000-square-foot office building, consolidated its ownership of its headquarters at 555 West 18th Street with its purchase of the land it’s sitting on, IAC announced Tuesday afternoon.

“Our building was always more than an office. We didn’t want to build another skyscraper, we wanted to excite the imagination, stimulate ideas and collaboration, and do so in an area of the city at the cusp of transformation,” Diller, IAC’s chairman and senior executive, wrote in the announcement. “Seventeen years later, Chelsea bubbles with new life and energy and IAC is proud to have been there at the beginning.”

IAC paid cash to buy the property from the Resnicoff family, The Real Deal has learned.

A Marcus & Millichap team led by Eric Anton and Steven Siegel negotiated the sale.

Anton said the marketing process drew “tremendous interest” from private equity groups and high-net worth buyers.

“But IAC was committed to owning their home,” he said. “They moved incredibly fast with an all cash offer.”

The Resnicoff family, longtime West Chelsea land owners, ground-leased the property in 2004 to the Georgetown Company, which developed the site as the headquarters for Diller’s media conglomerate, which is the parent company of Dotdash Meredith and The Daily Beast.

The family put the property up for sale late last year, one of the few investment sales to hit the market after rising interest rates chilled demand.