Capstone Equities Buying Savanna’s 360 Lexington Avenue for $65M

Joshua Zamir’s Capstone Equities and AmTrust RE are buying a Midtown East office building for a third of its $180 million price from five years ago, The Real Deal has learned.

Capstone and AmTrust are in contract on Savanna’s 360 Lexington Avenue for $65 million. That’s a deep discount to the $180 million Chris Schlank and Nick Bienstock’s Savanna paid for the 270,000-square-foot office and retail building in 2019, when it was about 82 percent leased.

The property now is 60 percent leased, and with its $110 million mortgage due, Savanna was in an unenviable position — as were its lenders on the property, Barclays and PPM America. The lenders directed the sales process.

A spokesperson for Savanna declined to comment and a representative for Capstone did not respond to a request. A Newmark team led by Adam Spies and Adam Doneger negotiated the deal.

The property, which sits a short walk from Grand Central Terminal, had been pitched as a potential office-to-residential conversion, but the plan now is to keep it as an office building.

Savanna bought the 24-story building from AEW Capital Management at a time when it was busy buying up office buildings.

Around the same time, it bought 521 Fifth Avenue from SL Green Realty for $381 million and a Flatiron District office property at 24-28 West 25th Street for $110 million.

But Savanna, like many other investors, has struggled with a weak office market and rising interest rates.

Late last year the company handed its Harlem office building at 1825 Park Avenue over to its lenders.