The site, which takes up the full western block front of Seventh Avenue between 55th and 56th streets across from Carnegie Hall, has roughly 8,500 sf of space allocated for the hotel as well as 8,000 sf of retail. The hotel was rumored to be on the market since last summer.
The Sonnenblick-Goldman Co. team of Mark J. Gordon, Svetlin Ganchev and Terry Hess arranged the sale on behalf of Lehman Brothers. "The hotel's unencumbered nature, which allows ownership total flexibility in repositioning the asset, enabled us to generate tremendous interest from the international investment community," says Gordon, managing director and principal of Sonnenblick.
In July 2003, an investment partnership comprised of the Whitehall Street Real Estate Funds, a series of real estate opportunity funds sponsored by Goldman Sachs, Highgate and Oxford Capital Partners Inc./Oxford Lodging Investment and Advisory Group LLC purchased the Metropolitan for $100 million. In mid 1999, the same players purchased the 700-room Hotel Lexington from TAJ Hotels for a reported $117 million or $167,000 per room.
Some of last year's largest transactions were in the hotel market. In October, the famed Plaza Hotel sold to El-Ad Properties, led by Miki Naftali, for $675 million. Prior to that Lifestar Hotels picked up the Paramount Hotel in Times Square for $126.5 million. In fact, Sonnenblick-Goldman's International Lodging and Leisure Group completed $700 million of New York City hotel sale and finance transactions in the past 12 months.
"In addition, the speed and strength of the New York City hotel market recovery has once again proven the city's resilience," notes Gordon. "New York real estate remains a must-have for the international investment community, for the city is the undisputed capital of the world."
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