Hotelier John Lam has paid Extell Development $67.5 million for a Chelsea parking garage site primed for the development of a 270,000-square-foot hotel tower, according to commercial firm Massey Knakal Realty Services, which brokered the transaction.
The garage is home to a longstanding flea market known as the Chelsea Antiques Garage. Extell acquired it for $42.7 million in 2006 and filed plans for a 233,544-square-foot, 29-story hotel at the site, at 112 West 25th Street, in 2009.
Extell faced foreclosure at the site last year after Wells Fargo, the mortgage holder on the property, filed for permission from the New York State Supreme Court to take control of the garage and put it on the market. It claimed in the filing that Extell had an outstanding loan of close to $39 million on the property.
The deal for the building was originally reported by Crain’s, which did not include the price paid by Lam. The transaction has not yet hit public records.
Lam reportedly plans to plough $300 million into building a hotel at the site.
Massey Knakal’s Bob Knakal, who brokered the deal alongside colleague Brock Emmetsberger, said in a statement that the deal “illustrated the continued traction in the land market” in Manhattan. – Katherine Clarke