Stefan Soloviev has made his next move on Billionaires’ Row.
Soloviev Group paid more than $67 million to buy a site on West 57th Street where a few months ago Gary Barnett purchased a defaulted loan.
Soloviev bought the property at 24 West 57th Street, Bloomberg reported, which sits next to a large assemblage that his father had spent decades piecing together.
“This has been a multi decade assemblage,” Soloviev told The Real Deal. “The possibilities are endless on what that site will be as well as the fact that it lets us protect our south facing views from 9 West. Whatever we end up doing across the street will be EPIC.”
Barnett’s Extell Development in October acquired the $50 million defaulted loan on APF Properties’ block-through plot of land at 24 West 57th Street. It wasn’t clear what the developer had planned at the time. But given his track record gamesmanship, it appeared he had grander plans than simply acquiring the debt.
The property is a sizable site that has the potential for more than 140,000 buildable square feet. But it also sits next to a four-piece assemblage at 6-20 West 57th Street that Soloviev’s company has been stitching together since the 1980s at a cost of more than $300 million.
Soloviev in October told TRD that he had had no interest in buying 24 West 57th Street.
“I have enough square footage to do what I want there so I don’t need that building,” he said.
The property sits across the street from 9 West 57th Street, the trophy office tower developed by Soloviev’s father, the late Sheldon Solow.
Soloviev CEO Michael Hershman told Bloomberg that the area south of Central Park between Fifth and Sixth avenues “has all of a sudden become a pretty hot environment for investment.”
“It’s become the focus of a number of developers and companies about doing something on this block,” he added. “We’ve been entertaining a number of options for across the street.”
He said one option for the site would be to tear down the current building and develop a larger commercial tower prime for a company’s headquarters. Another — more likely — option would be to build a luxury condo building with a boutique hotel and retail space, drawing inspiration from the success of projects like the Crown Building.
“There’s still a great appetite for high-end residential and for branded, five-star hotels,” he said.
Read more
Commercial
New York
Gary Barnett elbows up to Stefan Soloviev’s Billionaires’ Row assemblage