Aby Rosen Loses Battle for Chrysler Building

Aby Rosen’s last-ditch effort to hold onto the Chrysler Building has come up short — the most significant loss so far in the investor’s troubled portfolio.

A Manhattan judge Wednesday ruled that RFR’s ground lease with Cooper Union at the iconic skyscraper is terminated, and ordered Rosen’s company ejected from the property.

RFR had sued Cooper Union in September after the school moved to terminate the company’s ground lease. Cooper Union said the company stopped paying rent in June and racked up arrears to the tune of $21 million.

“Despite their desperate attempts to shift the focus, the problem has always been their continued failure to meet their obligations,” John Ruth, Cooper Union’s vice president of finance and administration, said in a statement.

A spokesperson for RFR did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Chrysler Building marks the high and low of these last couple of years for Rosen.

Rosen bought the ground lease on the landmark office tower for $151 million in 2019 with plans to revamp the aging icon. But the cost of the lease payments proved to be too much, and Rosen sought to renegotiate the deal with Cooper Union.

Making matters more difficult, RFR’s partner on the property — Austria real estate investor Signa Holding — filed for bankruptcy in 2023.

Cooper Union sent RFR a default notice in July, but RFR refused to recognize it. In fact, when the school sent representatives to kick Rosen and his company out of the building, they refused to leave.

Rosen attempted a legal maneuver based on an argument that Cooper Union’s handling of campus protests over the Gaza conflict drove tenants away and made it impossible to meet his lease payments. The judge didn’t buy that argument, however, and moved to dismiss his claim.

Ruth said Cooper Union will work “to assume full management of the property so we can implement a long-term plan to improve the tenant experience and maximize the building’s value.”