ROOSEVELT’S UP FOR SALE AT COOL $1B
July 11, 2007 — NO sooner did we whis per the Roosevelt Hotel as being a potential development site last Friday then we were tipped that it was actually coming to market - and could sell for, gulp, $1 billion as an office development site. Just over a year ago, the Pakistani government, which owns the 1,013 room hotel as PIA Investments, bought out its 50/50 Saudi partner, Prince Faisal bin Khalid of Saudi Arabia.
Infighting and Pakistani political factionalism stopped an earlier sales effort in 2003 that would have brought in around $225 million slated to be used to purchase new jets for its airline.
Sources said Cushman & Wakefield will be marking the hotel through its Fab Foursome: Richard Baxter, Ron Cohen, Scott Latham and Jon Caplan. The company declined comment.
At a breakfast meeting at Michael’s yesterday morning, C&W executives were bullish on the ongoing sales and leasing markets, as vacancy rates have dropped to 5.3 percent and asking rents are up to $75.79 a foot in Midtown, a 35 percent jump since this time last year.
The hotel occupies nearly a full-acre block just north of Grand Central Terminal bounded by 45th and 46th Streets, Vanderbilt and Madison avenues.
Its 43,000 foot site can be built to 800,000 feet as-of-right, but attorneys say that special district air rights can be piled on to create a skyscraper that could leap to 1.5 million feet.
Potential bidders are being advised to compare the hotel to the site next to the Museum of Modern Art which sold for $775 a buildable foot, but is mid-block near Sixth Avenue.
Over a number of years making strategic land and air rights purchases, Macklowe Properties paid around $950 a foot for the Swisshotel Drake New York at Park Avenue and 56th Street, which they have changed from a residential hotel to offices.
Office rents have since climbed markedly in the city with 18 deals completed at over $125 a foot this year alone versus 16 in all of last year. * >PAGE 1>
