Ackman wants $630M for Hell’s Kitchen office building

Investor Bill Ackman is reportedly seeking hundreds of millions for the Hell’s Kitchen office building he co-owns with the Georgetown Company.

The partners are looking to sell the building at 787 11th Avenue for approximately $630 million, Bloomberg reported, citing people familiar with the matter. The 10-story building is fully leased with tenants including Ackman’s Pershing Square Capital Management, which houses its headquarters across two floors.

The company is reportedly not looking to move upon a sale, per Bloomberg. Cushman & Wakefield is marketing the property.

Georgetown and Ackman purchased the building in 2015 for more than $255 million. The building has since received more than $100 million in improvements.

The partnership in March signed the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai to a long-term lease at the office building, where the medical school took 165,000 square feet at a reported asking rent of approximately $100 per square foot. The research facility will be used to study genome sequencing and genome development, proteomics and protein engineering, along with gene and cell editing.

Other tenants at the building include an auto dealership and a laboratory for Neri Oxman, Ackman’s wife.

A group of celebrities in 2018 jumped on as investors at the former Ford Motor Co. building. LeBron James, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Jimmy Iovine and Boston Red Sox chairman Tom Werner were all identified as investors in the building, though the values of their investments were not clear.

While Georgetown is looking to sell the Far West Side office building, it is also looking to make a splash in another real estate sector: Last month, the firm launched a fund and management partnership targeting $1 billion worth of hotels.

The potential sale comes in the wake of the pandemic’s major hit on the New York City office market, which suffered a 16.6 percent drop in buildings’ market value during the last fiscal year, according to a report from the state comptroller. The $28.6 billion decline was the first of the century for the market.

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[Bloomberg] — Holden Walter-Warner