„ A nearly 1 million-square-foot Midtown office building is up for sale, and anyone with a free Ten-X account can bid on it.
The Swiss bank UBS and its brokers at JLL have listed the 920,000-square-foot building at 135 West 50th Street for sale on the platform. UBS owns the property through a long-term leasehold, and Safehold owns the ground underneath the building. The starting bid is $7.5 million and it’s unclear what the reserve price is.
The 1960s-era Class A building is 35 percent occupied and recently underwent a $76 million renovation, according to the listing. UBS sold the property a block west of Rockefeller Center to Safehold in 2019 for $285 million, then signed a $221 million lease that expires in 2123. A source said the ground lease probably negatively impacted the property value.“
Would it be conceivable that the Michelangelo Hotel (Taft Hotel) on 7th Ave. could also be acquired in order to possibly combine it?
I have another suggestion: to acquire this building and the Time and Life Building in order to erect a mixed tower here. Okay, demolishing the Time and Life Building would be almost impossible as it was refurbished a few years ago.
„ The new owner could also opt to convert 135 West 50th into residences or bulldoze it altogether to build something new. But each choice is challenging or expensive.
Razing the building and constructing an entirely new one would cost, at least, hundreds of millions of dollars.
While elected officials have encouraged developers to transform many older Manhattan office buildings into apartments or condominiums, very few transformations have moved forward, largely because of the high cost. Likewise, a large-scale change at 135 West 50th Street might be unlikely.
Mr. Sturner pointed to multiple issues that limited the building’s potential for conversion into residences: 10-foot-tall ceilings, which are short by today’s standards; large, inconsistently placed columns; inadequate light from its mid-block location; and existing office tenants scattered throughout the building who would need to be relocated to free up contiguous space.“
