MAKING its first big-city debut, Los Angeles-based Metropolitan Real Estate Investors has lassoed both the Lipstick Building and 292 Madison Ave. in deals valued at $607 million and $140 million, respectively.
Led by Haim Revah, Metropolitan signed the contracts Monday night with Tishman Speyer Properties for the Lipstick Building, which is located at 885 Third Ave., and with SL Green Realty Trust for 292 Madison Ave., Revah confirmed.
“It’s part of our strategy to get into the Manhattan market in a very serious way,” Revah said. He declined to confirm the purchase prices.
“We believe in the Manhattan market,” Revah continued. He and his partners “love the location and the potential” afforded by 292 Madison, a classic, granite Class B building with arched windows located on the southwest corner of 41st Street opposite the CIBC Building.
Meanwhile, Rivah called the 587,000-foot Lipstick Building, “a Class A, high-profile building with good tenancies and also a lot of potential.”
Its price tag of about $1,016 a foot was at a slight discount to the trophy market, as 20 percent of the building sits on a land lease with about 75 years remaining.
Metropolitan recently bought the 1.5 million-foot Bank One Center in Dallas, and also owns properties in Chicago and Los Angeles, where Revah got his start in the fashion world.
“He’s a real nice gentleman and I helped him get his first deal in Oklahoma,” recalled real estate investor Ofer Yardeni of New York-based Stonehenge Partners.
Another local investor described Revah as “a charming, aggressive, interesting, driven character.”
Revah has hired former Rockrose executive Rob Franco and set up a local office to concentrate on buying more city bricks.
Cushman & Wakefield’s Fearless Foursome – Richard Baxter, Ron Cohen, Scott Latham and Jon Caplan – were marketing 292 Madison on behalf of SL Green.
Offers were due yesterday, but sources said Metropolitan came in with an aggressive offer last Thursday and worked all weekend to get the deal done. C&W declined comment.
For the second time in three years, the Queen of Skyscrapers, Darcy Stacom, partner Bill Shanahan, and the team at CB Richard Ellis were the marketers for the Philip Johnson-designed Lipstick Building, which got its nickname from its pink, oval shape.
In 2004, Rob Speyer led Tishman Speyer in its then-aggressive $235 million purchase of the tower with the Travelers U.S. Real Estate Venture V – a fund backed in part by city employees – at $400 a foot.
Speyer locked in a 320,000-foot lease renewal and expansion with the law firm Latham & Watkins when asking rents were $67 a foot.
Then Stacom and Shanahan helped recapitalize a 49 percent minority interest about two years ago with Prudential TMW.
Now, sources said, Speyer once again turned to Stacom and Shanahan to market and maneuver the cash out to pocket an astounding $124 million for each year of their three-years of ownership.
Neither Tishman Speyer’s nor CBRE’s spokesmen would comment.
In this instance, Revah also worked over the weekend and came in with a “New York-style” large deposit to seal the deal.
