Tuesday, February 26, 2013

Downtown, Revisted


We recently covered an area of downtown New York that got roughed up during Superstorm Sandy.  This past week, the NY Times and WSJ caught up with some of the aftermath and today's post will cover 4 New York Plaza and 199 Water Street.

The news for 199 Water Street isn't all that great.  NYT tries to mollify the status of the building but here are some facts gleaned from the article.
  1. Wells Fargo isn't rolling the lease when it expires in 2015.  They are currently taking up 325K square feet out of 1.1M which is about 30%.
  2. Clean-up and repairs will cost around $50M
  3. The space needed to host the electrical switchboards (replacing the ones damaged from the flood) will cannibalize space that could be used for leasing.
    1. The building is currently 94% occupied so it's not like there's much room to stuff the electrical boards into.
Mind you, the building represents a hefty chunk (~11%) of the collateral in MSC 2007-HQ11.

As for 4 New York Plaza, the 1M square-foot building bought in 2012 for $270M by a joint-venture that includes HSBC, has yet to see it's main tenants move back into the building.  Overhauling the building is likely to cost around $60M.  Concrete Jungle covered some of the aspects of this building this past summer.

The articles try to provide a positive spin on the situation, but as far as I'm concerned, until Flavors Cafe at 175 Water Street is up and running again, this area is a long ways away from it's former glory.

~-Jingle Male

5 comments:

crabsofsteel said...

the debt service coverage on the big loan in MSC 2007-HQ11 is high enough that they can lose Wells Fargo and still make their payments. This borrower also owns other healthy properties, so I am not worried about it. Have you tried the felafel place on Ann Street?? Nowhere else can you eat with a portrait of Menachem Scnheerson watching over you.

crabsofsteel said...

Financial District's Restaurant Row Is Still Dark After Hurricane Sandy

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/forkintheroad/2013/02/financial_district_after_sandy.php

crabsofsteel said...

according to roger, lbubs 2006-c7 is looking at 100mm in writedown from the loans which were just auctioned (if indeed they sell).

Jingle Male said...

@Crabs.

Not sure if this is covered, but the Abercrombie and Fitch, and Europa Cafe that are ground-floor tenants of 199 Water are still shuttered. I'm assuming the ground-floor tenants facing the East River are down as well.

Thanks for the articles by the way!

crabsofsteel said...

There are 35 stories of office on top of the retail space. Too bad the most recent rent roll is pre-Sandy, but Legal Aid and Aon say they're still there.