Sold: 100 Church St. Goes to SL Green

The lobby at 100 Church St. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)MORE

Charlotte Cuthbertson

Senior Reporter

Charlotte Cuthbertson is a senior reporter with The Epoch Times who primarily covers border security and the opioid crisis.

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January 14, 2010Updated: January 14, 2010

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NEW YORK—Office landlord SL Green Realty Corp. won the bid for the office building 100 Church Street on Jan. 8, with $10,000—the only bid in the mix.

The 19-story building was owned by the Sapir Organization, who failed to meet loan payments last August and management was turned over to SL Green at that time.

SL Green will share ownership with Gramercy Capital and they pick up a $145 million mortgage with Wells Fargo as part of the deal.

The building only has 50 percent of its capacity rented and the market remains sluggish.

100 Church is just one casualty in the commercial real estate slump. Steven Herman, partner at law firm Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP, said in August 2009 that, “In each of the next four years there is over $300 billion of real estate debt that’s going to come due.”

100 Church Street in Manhattan sold to SL Green Realty Corp. for $10,000 last week. SL Green and co-owners Gramercy inherit a $145 million debt with the purchase. (Charlotte Cuthbertson/The Epoch Times)

Herman gleaned his statistics from talks he had with experts at Harvard University. “By 2013 they were talking about $1.4 trillion of real estate debt that’s going to mature.”

The office sector jobs outlook in New York City is more positive than the national picture, according to Marc Holliday, chief executive of SL Green, in a phone conference in October on Seeking Alpha.

“Improvement will occur first in New York before most or all other commercial markets in the U.S,” he said. “Private sector job losses for the year in the city are trending about 100,000 jobs less than what was originally forecasted by New York City budget and public sector job loss in our market has been negligible, although could possibly increase in the ensuing year.”

SL Green is New York City’s largest commercial office landlord with 29 buildings in Manhattan and a total of 23,211 million sq. ft.

The company predominantly acquires, owns, repositions and manages Manhattan office properties, although it has ownership interests in 34 suburban assets totaling 7,656,500 square feet in Brooklyn, Queens, Long Island, Westchester County, Connecticut and New Jersey, according to its Web site.

Last week the company refinanced the mortgage on the Times Square office building that is home to media company Viacom Inc. with a lower mortgage, eliminating some of its debt, according to Reuters.
The real estate investment trust told Reuters on Jan. 5 that it closed on a $475 million refinancing of 1515 Broadway with a five-year floating rate mortgage. The new loan replaces the former $625 million mortgage that was set to mature in November.

SL Green Realty (NYSE:SLG) stock closed Friday at $48.56 on volume of 2,210,426 shares, below average daily volume of 2,252,762, according to MySmarTrend. SL Green Realty is currently above its 50-day moving average of $45.78 and above its 200-day moving average of $32.01.