Eyal Ofer and his partners have purchased the site of the Mayflower Hotel on Central Park West Street in New York for $401 million. The group will spend $400 million on building two residential high-rises. Analysts said the price was a new record, and more than double the going rate in Manhattan.
The plans stipulate that one of the high-rises will have 34 storeys, and the other nineteen. Another report says that both towers will have 39 storeys. The two bottom floors in both towers will be used for shops on four levels along the entire Broadway blockfront. The buildings are designed to contain 250-280 apartments, with average space of 195 sq.m. per apartment. Prices will vary from several million dollars on the lower floors to tens of millions of dollars on the upper floors.
The cost of buying the Mayflower Hotel was extremely high. Ofer and his partners will have to pay high taxes and compensation to four protected tenants with long-term leases in the hotel.
Furthermore, in order to obtain a permit to build more storeys than permitted in the area, the partners will have to build moderate-income housing on the corner of 102nd Street and Broadway, 40 blocks away from the Mayflower Hotel.
The project is located near Columbus Circle. It is part of the real estate boom created by the Time-Warner Center, one of New York’s main architectural attractions, located on the other side of the circle. Following the completion of the Time-Warner Center in 2004, real estate values in the area rose to “astronomical levels,” according to a “New York Post” report yesterday.
Brothers Arthur and Lie Zeckendorf, two of New York’s biggest real estate tycoons, are also partners in the project, together with Goldman Sachs-owned Whitehall Fund.
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes.co.il - on March 23, 2005