Turkish developer Sedesco adds to Billionaires’ Row assemblage with $80M buy
Turkish developer Sedesco is putting together a Billionaires’ Row assemblage with the purchase of a development site for $80 million.
Sedesco closed last week on its purchase of the property at 41 West 57th Street from Florida-based seller Asuman Polat, property records filed with the city Tuesday show.
The purchase gives Midtown-based Sedesco about 100,000 square feet of buildable area on the block between Fifth and Sixth avenues. The company in 2012 paid $71.5 million to buy an adjacent property at 50 West 58th Street.
Neither Sedesco nor Polat could be immediately reached for comment.
The purchase now gives Sedesco full control of the property at 41 West 57th Street, which is a point of contention between Polat and billionaire real estate investor Kamran Hakim.
Polat triple net leased the property to Hakim in 1998 for a term of 40 years, expiring in 2028. In October of last year, Hakim transferred the lease to Sedesco for $27.9 million, property records show.
But in March, Polat filed a lawsuit in Manhattan State Supreme Court claiming Hakim defaulted on the lease in July 2016 by failing to pay more than $60,000 he owed to the landlord.
The case is still ongoing.
Renderings for an ornate, 102-story residential tower at the site appeared online in 2015, though they appear to be merely conceptual.
Sedesco, a subsidiary of an Istanbul-based firm, filed demolition permits for a pair of buildings along West 57th Street last week, according to city documents. Along with an adjacent building to the north, the company appears to be prepping the through-block site for a new project.
The Turkish developer has spent about $223 million buying out a ground lease and purchasing the three properties for the assemblage. Together the sites could generate a 100,000-square-foot project, according to a Real Deal report. The Department of Buildings said it is still reviewing the pair of demolition permits for 41 and 43 W. 57th St. It already granted permission to tear down the adjacent building, at 50 W. 58th St.
I wouldn’t be surprised if this assemblage is being incorporated with the adjacent Vornado assemblage. Makes too much sense. There’s only one small building separating the two.
Or maybe there will be two superslim towers going up, kinda like CPT and 220 (but even closer and slimmer).
