Tenants protest outside the leasing office this time last year. Their signs, along with the Tenants Association logo, read: ST-PCV A community. Not a commodity.
(Photo by Sabina Mollot)
On Tuesday, CWCapital dropped the bombshell that it would be foreclosing on Stuyvesant Town’s mezzanine debt and that there would be a sale in one month. A possible bidder who’s since emerged is CW’s own parent company, Fortress, at a rumored offer of $4.7 billion.
Since neither Fortress or CW have been willing to comment on this, it’s still not official or a done deal by any means.
However, when one considers the Stuy Town special servicer’s history of communicating on this issue, rumors wind up being the most reliable thing this community’s got to go on.
As of T&V’s Wednesday press time, even a developer who’s been eager to bid on the property, Gerald Guterman, now has doubts due to the high price. Because even if tenants are eventually given the opportunity to buy, how many current residents would actually be able to afford to?
As of Tuesday, the Tenants Association maintained that it is interested, with partner Brookfield, of owning, and no longer seeing the community get passed around like meat.
But again, there’s the issue of the pricetag. Speculation of what ST/PCV could be worth is what led to the most infamous real estate flop ever, with Tishman Speyer losing its investors’ billions. Is the place really worth $4.7 billion, even in a recovering market? And if a bidder thinks so, how many more (in many cases perfectly legal) efforts will be made to price out tenants in unrenovated apartments paying lower rents? Or even gouge those already paying higher rents? There’s always more “improvements” that could be made on the tenants’ dime permanently.
The new mayor made a campaign trail promise to protect ST/PCV and other places like it from the circling of real estate buzzards like the ones who wrongly thought a complex built for the middle class was the goose that laid golden eggs in 2006. Now it is time to see if he meant it.
