THE office building at 230 Park Ave. South is expected to fetch north of $250 million.
The 350,000-foot building on the southwest corner of East 19th Street is home to p.r. firm Burson-Marsteller, J.P. Morgan Chase, Institutional Investor and HIT Entertainment – the company behind cartoon character Bob the Builder.
The ownership is split between Mickey Rabina and a limited partnership of ex-Lazard Freres’ bankers. After managing partner Kenneth H. Simpson passed away last July, the others put on their sales caps.
Sources say Cushman & Wakefield’s Fab Four, Richard Baxter, Ron Cohen, Scott Latham and Jon Caplan, are marketing it with a nod to a Bob the Builder tune: “Can we sell it? Yes we can!”
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How do you get to Carnegie Hall? If you buy the former headquarters of Columbia Artists Management Inc. – aka the CAMI building – for up to $25 million, you simply cross the street.
But the 20,000-foot 57th Street terracotta landmark – including a 240-seat recital hall – won’t be sold to just anyone.
Investment marketeer Billy Cohen of Newmark Knight Frank is telling potential buyers that CAMI boss Ronald Wilford – known in classical music circles as the Silver Fox – is very picky.
“It will end up with a Master of the Universe who has his own art collection or someone who wants to host fund-raisers with Randy Newman at the piano,” joked one source.
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Poets & Writers has closed a deal for 7,500 feet on a portion of the 21st floor of 90 Broad St.
According to broker Suzanne Sunshine, who heads the Nonprofit Practice Group at CB Richard Ellis, the literary nonprofit will get incentives worth $75,000 over the first five years of the 10-year term.
“This is significant for them,” said Sunshine, who is concerned about the March 31 cutoff date for qualifying for the Lower Manhattan Commercial Incentive Program, which will reduce downtown’s corporate diversity.
“The [State Assembly] Speaker [Sheldon Silver] is aware of the deadline and is looking to address it,” said Skip Carrier, a spokesman for Silver.
Asking rents in the area have risen to more than $30 a foot since the deal was negotiated in December and Sunshine is now leading clients on tours around the more affordable Brooklyn.
