SL Green Already Making Headlines This Year

To start the year, Marc Holliday’s SL Green is straddling two very different realities in Manhattan’s office market. The contrast is hard to miss.

On one side is 100 Park Avenue, where the real estate investment trust looks firmly in control. Selling a minority stake in the building to Rockpoint at a $425 million valuation gave SL Green a clean, early win as it kicks off a planned $2.5 billion selloff.

The move came just weeks after the firm bought out Prudential’s 49 percent stake at a $360 million valuation, put in fresh equity and quickly turned around and sold an interest at a higher mark.

That kind of sequencing sends a message: this isn’t a fire sale. The 900,000-square-foot tower is 95 percent leased, buoyed by Alvarez & Marsal’s 220,000-square-foot deal, and sits just south of Grand Central; it’s exactly the kind of asset that’s still drawing capital.

By selling partial interests instead of whole buildings, SL Green is freeing up cash to deal with high interest rates while keeping a hand on the wheel. Management has framed the selloff as balance-sheet management, not a pullback, and has already said it plans to be back buying this year.

Across Midtown, though, the tone is much more combative. At Worldwide Plaza, SL Green and RXR are fighting in court to block a UCC foreclosure they say is designed to wrest control of the property rather than recover mezzanine debt. The lawsuit against Extell Development paints the auction as rushed, restrictive and tilted to scare off real bidders.

It’s a high-stakes fight over who gets leverage in restructuring nearly $1 billion of CMBS debt.

The backdrop is ugly. Worldwide Plaza is only about 63 percent occupied, lost Cravath as its anchor tenant and was appraised at $345 million last year, down sharply from its pre-pandemic peak.

Together, the properties show SL Green playing both sides of the cycle: cashing in where demand and liquidity still exist and digging in where the path forward depends less on leasing wins and more on control, timing and the courts.

There’s been no shortage of New York real estate headlines in the early days of 2026. Here’s some of the week’s other big stories.

Judge rejects Mamdani’s bid to pause Pinnacle auction, paves way for Summit takeover

In the first big test of Zohran Mamdani’s real estate policy plans, a bankruptcy judge rejected the city’s bid to pause the auction of over 5,000 rent-stabilized apartments. The decision allows Summit Properties to proceed with a possible takeover of Joel Wiener’s Pinnacle Group portfolio, though results of Thursday’s auction still weren’t public by the time of this writing.

“Broken promises” and unpaid bills: Law firm representing Chetrit seeks to withdraw from case

Attorney Elliott Joffe accused the Chetrits of non-cooperation, providing unreliable info and unpaid legal bills and is seeking to withdraw from representing Meyer Chetrit. The developer is battling a $132 million judgement owed to an entity of Maverick Real Estate Partners after a foreclosure case, as well as criminal charges of tenant harassment.

Judge awards $22M to JLL over Moshe Silber’s mortgage fraud

Moshe Silber and his business partner, Fred Schulman, were ordered to pay $21.7 million in restitution to their lender, JLL. The pair pleaded guilty more than a year ago to a mortgage fraud scheme in which they obtained an inflated loan for a 976-unit rental property in Cincinnati.

Housing whirlwind: Mamdani wastes no time targeting “bad landlords”

Mamdani began his term targeting “bad landlords,” including naming tenant advocate Cea Weaver as director of the relaunched Office to Protect Tenants. The city is also hosting “Rental Ripoff” hearings for tenants to voice grievances and help shape future policy