The pyramid-topped former Banker’s Trust building at 14 Wall St. has been contracted to be sold for $325 million as office space.
Sources told The Post that Cushman & Wakefield’s investment marketing team approached John Zamir of Capstone Equities about buying the building.
Zamir had recently left his family company, and the C&W quartet of Ron Cohen, Richard Baxter, Scott Latham and Jon Caplan convinced him to go after the building, which was not for sale.
Once Zamir was on board it took about a week for the quarreling owners to agree to sell the building.
The sellers, a venture of Lev Leviev’s Africa-Israel Investments and Shaya Boymelgreen, bought the 1 million-foot building in 2005 for $215 million with plans to convert it to residential use. After the conversion market stalled, the partners shifted towards selling not-for-profit condos but had trouble completing deals.
Meanwhile, demand for downtown office space has risen along with pricing, which is now regularly in the $40s- to $50s-a-foot range in better buildings.
“It’s always encouraging that investment is being made in an important office building in lower Manhattan and the space will be retained for commercial office use at the historic corner of Wall and Broad,” said Eric Deutsch, president of the Downtown Alliance.
