A Big Deal, Even in Manhattan: a Tower Goes for $1.8 Billion

December 7, 2006 A Big Deal, Even in Manhattan: A Tower Goes for $1.8 Billion

By CHARLES V. BAGLI

Records are still being broken as fast as they can be set in New York real estate.

Tishman Speyer Properties, the company that bought Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village for $5.4 billion last month in the biggest real estate deal in the country, has agreed to sell the 41- story skyscraper at 666 Fifth Avenue and 53rd Street for $1.8 billion to a New Jersey real estate family, the Kushners.

The price is more than three times what a group led by Tishman Speyer paid for the building six years ago and the highest price ever paid for a single office building in the United States.

The Kushners, who own 22,000 apartments and more than five million square feet of office and industrial space in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Maryland, are relatively unknown as real-estate players in Manhattan. But they are making a head-turning splash buying a tower that has served as a symbol of corporate power and elegance since it opened in 1957.

Brooks Brothers has a store on the ground floor. Tenants include high-powered law firms and bankers. At the top of the building is the Grand Havana Room, an exclusive cigar bar that offers stunning views to the politically connected and the fabulously wealthy who are its members.

“This is a great acquisition for our company,” said Jared Kushner, 25, a principal at Kushner Companies, who signed the contract to buy the building Monday night. “We are upping our presence in Manhattan. It’s a logical expansion for us.”

Kushner also owns the Puck Building downtown. Earlier this year, Mr. Kushner paid an estimated $10 million for a majority stake in The New York Observer, a weekly newspaper with a small but influential readership in New York’s real estate, political and media circles.

Mr. Kushner’s father, Charles B. Kushner, is a company founder and a newsmaker in his own right. A major Democratic fund-raiser, Charles Kushner was convicted last year of 18 counts of tax evasion, witness tampering and illegal campaign donations. He was released from prison earlier this year. Now the Kushners have acquired a major trophy.

“This’ll wind up being the highest price in the country for a single building,” said Dan Fasulo, director of market analysis for Real Capital Analytics, a research and consulting firm. “It’s amazing. But nothing surprises me anymore in this market.”

With vacancy rates low, rents rising and few new buildings coming on line, local and international tycoons, pension funds and other investors have lined up with billions of dollars to buy New York real estate.

The sale of 666 Fifth Avenue will surpass the previous record for an office building, which was set last year when Tishman Speyer bought the MetLife Building for $1.72 billion. But while Tishman Speyer bought the MetLife Building for $604 per square foot, the company sold 666 Fifth for twice that, or $1,200 per square foot.

In 2000, Tishman Speyer led a group that bought Rockefeller Center, a commercial and retail complex, for $1.85 billion.

“New York City is the greatest place in the world to own real estate,” said Rob Speyer, a senior managing director at Tishman Speyer. “We’re thrilled with the outcome and wish the Kushners great success.”

Mr. Speyer said the partnership, which includes TMW, a German investment firm that also owns the Chrysler Building in partnership with Tishman Speyer, had always planned to acquire the tower, improve it and then sell it off.

He said deal was unrelated to a separate partnership’s purchase of Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village, a collection of 11,200 apartments in 110 buildings overlooking the East River.

But the Tishman family’s history is intertwined with 666 Fifth. The 1.5 million-square-foot tower was developed by Tishman Realty and Construction and was originally known as the Tishman Building. The firm broke up in 1976, and the building was sold two years later for $80 million.

Tishman Speyer and TMW bought it in 2000 for $518 million. They expanded and upgraded the retail portion of the tower and allowed Citigroup to put its corporate logo at the top of the building, for an undisclosed seven-figure annual rent.