A prestigious Fifth Avenue skyscraper is up for sale and could fetch US$3 billion or more, which would be a record price for a US office building.
The General Motors building, a 50-story tower built in 1968 at the southeast corner of Central Park across from the Plaza Hotel, occupies a full city block and is best known as the home of two retail tourist attractions, the FAO Schwarz toy emporium and Apple's glass cube store.
General Motors Corp sold the building in 1991 and the automaker now occupies only a few floors.
NEW RECORD
Real estate industry experts said its sale price would easily exceed the previous record of US$1.8 billion, which was set in 2006 by a 41-story building six blocks further south on Fifth Avenue.
One of the potential buyers for the tower is real-estate investor Joseph Cayre, who told the Wall Street Journal in an interview that he, along with unidentified partners in the Middle East, had put in a bid of at least US$3 billion.
A source familiar with the bidding process said real estate investor Larry Silverstein, the developer of the World Trade Center, had also offered at least US$3 billion.
The source spoke on condition of anonymity because the negotiations were ongoing.
A spokesman for the tower's owner, Harry Macklowe, declined to comment on Wednesday.
Macklowe bought the building from the insurance firm Conseco for US$1.4 billion in 2003.
PROBLEMS
His organization began soliciting offers after running into a multibillion dollar credit problem associated with the recent purchase of several other expensive Manhattan buildings.
The offers for the GM building demonstrate continued optimism about Manhattan's real estate market, which continues to sizzle.
"You need to separate New York City from the national trend," said Andy Simon, senior managing director of the New York office of the real estate services firm NAI Global.
FUNDAMENTALS
With vacancy rates low, rents going up and relatively little new office space under construction in the metropolis, "the underlying fundamentals in New York for commercial real estate remain very strong," Simon said.
The weak US dollar would also allow foreign investors to buy the skyscraper at something of a discount, Simon said.
CLASH OF WORDS: While China’s foreign minister insisted the US play a constructive role with China, Rubio stressed Washington’s commitment to its allies in the region The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) yesterday affirmed and welcomed US Secretary of State Marco Rubio statements expressing the US’ “serious concern over China’s coercive actions against Taiwan” and aggressive behavior in the South China Sea, in a telephone call with his Chinese counterpart. The ministry in a news release yesterday also said that the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs had stated many fallacies about Taiwan in the call. “We solemnly emphasize again that our country and the People’s Republic of China are not subordinate to each other, and it has been an objective fact for a long time, as well as
‘CHARM OFFENSIVE’: Beijing has been sending senior Chinese officials to Okinawa as part of efforts to influence public opinion against the US, the ‘Telegraph’ reported Beijing is believed to be sowing divisions in Japan’s Okinawa Prefecture to better facilitate an invasion of Taiwan, British newspaper the Telegraph reported on Saturday. Less than 750km from Taiwan, Okinawa hosts nearly 30,000 US troops who would likely “play a pivotal role should Beijing order the invasion of Taiwan,” it wrote. To prevent US intervention in an invasion, China is carrying out a “silent invasion” of Okinawa by stoking the flames of discontent among locals toward the US presence in the prefecture, it said. Beijing is also allegedly funding separatists in the region, including Chosuke Yara, the head of the Ryukyu Independence
‘VERY SHALLOW’: The center of Saturday’s quake in Tainan’s Dongshan District hit at a depth of 7.7km, while yesterday’s in Nansai was at a depth of 8.1km, the CWA said Two magnitude 5.7 earthquakes that struck on Saturday night and yesterday morning were aftershocks triggered by a magnitude 6.4 quake on Tuesday last week, a seismologist said, adding that the epicenters of the aftershocks are moving westward. Saturday and yesterday’s earthquakes occurred as people were preparing for the Lunar New Year holiday this week. As of 10am yesterday, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) recorded 110 aftershocks from last week’s main earthquake, including six magnitude 5 to 6 quakes and 32 magnitude 4 to 5 tremors. Seventy-one of the earthquakes were smaller than magnitude 4. Thirty-one of the aftershocks were felt nationwide, while 79
GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY: Taiwan must capitalize on the shock waves DeepSeek has sent through US markets to show it is a tech partner of Washington, a researcher said China’s reported breakthrough in artificial intelligence (AI) would prompt the US to seek a stronger alliance with Taiwan and Japan to secure its technological superiority, a Taiwanese researcher said yesterday. The launch of low-cost AI model DeepSeek (深度求索) on Monday sent US tech stocks tumbling, with chipmaker Nvidia Corp losing 16 percent of its value and the NASDAQ falling 612.46 points, or 3.07 percent, to close at 19,341.84 points. On the same day, the Philadelphia Stock Exchange Semiconductor Sector index dropped 488.7 points, or 9.15 percent, to close at 4,853.24 points. The launch of the Chinese chatbot proves that a competitor can
RSS