The retail stores at the Milford Plaza Hotel are being sold to Joseph Sitt of Thor Equities for $65 million, The Post has learned.
Thor will buy the 27,456 square-foot slice of the mammoth Times Square-area hotel for $2,730 a square foot, sources said. The 27-story hotel, the city’s largest when it was completed in 1928, has 1,331 rooms and amenities that are being upgraded by new owners.
The sale is in the form of a long-term lease through Feb. 29, 2112, and includes a partial lease-back by the hotel for a food court and gym.
In 2010, The Rockpoint Group and hotel owner Highgate Hotels bought the Milflord mainstay at 700 Eighth Ave. between West 44th and 45th streets for $200 million and hired Douglas Harmon and Adam Spies of Eastdil Secured to slice, dice and finance the parts and serve it up into portions to other investors.
Earlier this year, David Werner and Deutsche Asset & Wealth Management’s fund purchased the “fee,” or ground under the hotel, for $325 million, leasing the hotel and retail back to Rockpoint and Highgate.
At the end of April, NorthStar Realty Finance originated a $255 million loan in return for an equity interest of 35 percent.
As The Post’s Steve Cuozzo reported in 2010 when the building was being put up for sale by the Milstein family, the “Lullaby of Broadway” — the hotel used the song in TV ads for years — might become “The Lulla-buy of Broadway,” and so far it has.
Along with the 11,862 square feet on the sublevel, 11,675 square on the ground and 3,919 square feet at the second-floor lobby level, the retail is entitled to “blade” signage — or signs that protrude from the facade — on the corners of the hotel, and a satellite dish if needed for the business on the roof.
