THE office building at 230 Park Ave. South just went into contract to Rockrose Development Corp. for a price just like the address – $230 million.
While we’re sure that isn’t how the buyers figured out their winning bid, stranger recipes have been used to seal city deals.
The tab does work out to just under $700 a foot for each of its newly measured 386,000 feet.
The property, located at the corner of 19th Street in the Union Square area, is completely leased to Young & Rubicam with tenancies that include Burson-Marsteller, J.P. Morgan Chase, Institutional Investor and HIT Entertainment – the parent of cartoon character Bob the Builder.
The sellers are Mickey Rabina and a limited partnership of former Lazard Freres investment bankers, including partner Kenneth H. Simpson, who died last July, prompting the building’s sale.
H. Henry Elghanayan, a partner in the family-owned Rockrose, did not return a call by press time. The purchase is believed to have been generated by the need for a 1031 tax-free exchange.
Cushman & Wakefield’s Fab Four – Richard Baxter, Ron Cohen, Scott Latham and Jon Caplan – marketed it with a nod to the Bob the Builder tune: “Can we sell it? Yes we can!” But none returned calls for comment.
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Fashion house Giorgio Armani has just inked the lease with Jeff Sutton and joint-venture partner SL Green Realty Corp. for more than 40,000 feet at 717 Fifth Ave. It’s a deal that we advised you about a few weeks ago.
To complete it, Sutton and Green are exercising their option to buy the second and third floors. The current retail atrium tenant, Hugo Boss, has finally admitted it is looking for other and much smaller locations.
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Quick takes: We’ve learned that Home Depot is still scouting for a downtown location. The fix-it shop had been close to a pact at 345 Hudson St. but just couldn’t make it work. . .
Joel Herskowitz, former president and CEO of Grubb & Ellis New York, is going back to his roots, landing at insurance brokers Sterling & Sterling as managing principal in the real estate practice. Both his father and grandfather had insurance businesses, and he was on track to join the family business before he got sidetracked by Wall Street and real estate.
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With both kids at college, Eastern Consolidated Chairman Peter Hauspurg and wife Daun Paris are hoping to downsize from their Rockledge Farm, a 26-acre estate in Bedford Corners, by using a sealed bid auction on July 31.
The property, which was once owned by the Straus family of Macy’s fame, was appraised at $16 million a few years ago and cannot be split into pieces due to two conservation easements.
Hauspurg built a stunning, stone-accented country home and there are two other cottages and a tennis court on the property. The retreat is about a mile from the Saw Mill River Parkway.
