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

4 New York Plaza trades, defeases

4 New York Plaza traded from Harbor Group International (HGI) to HSBC and Edge Fund Advisors for $270mm. That's a great return for HGI who bought it as part of a sale-leaseback from JPMorgan in January 2010 for $107mm, although they did do some work to boost occupancy during that time.

The 2010 transaction was funded with a $72.6mm mortgage that comprises 24% of the RBSCF 2010-MB1 deal, which will be defeased. The new purchase is funded with a $154mm 5-year mortgage from MetLife according to an update out from Nomura. This is the first defeasance from a CMBS 2.0 deal.