SL Green Teases Interest in the Chrysler Building

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SL Green isn’t getting its Times Square casino, but another prize could be in the real estate investment trust’s purview.

Chief executive officer Marc Holliday recently expressed interest in acquiring the landmark Chrysler Building, Crain’s reported. Holliday made his comments at a shareholder dinner at the Le Pavillon restaurant inside One Vanderbilt, arranged by Bank of Montreal analyst John Kim.

“He said it’s an iconic building and at the right price, SL Green would be interested,” Kim told the outlet.

SL Green did not return requests for comments from Crain’s.

Cooper Union, which owns the Chrysler Building at 405 Lexington Avenue, tapped Savills to market the property’s ground lease in the spring. The arts and engineering school owns the land beneath the building.

While being a famed feature of the New York City skyline, the Chrysler Building has been a source of recent drama in the real estate industry.

In January, a judge terminated RFR’s ground lease, evicting it from the property. That ruling came months after Aby Rosen’s firm sued Cooper Union in September after the school moved to terminate the company’s ground lease. Cooper Union claimed the company stopped paying rent in June and racked up arrears to the tune of $21 million.

Rosen’s firm bought the ground lease of the office tower for $151 million in 2019, harboring plans to revamp the building. It invested $170 million in renovations during its brief time at the property.

But the cost of the lease payments proved problematic after the onset of the pandemic and the 2023 bankruptcy of RFR’s partner at the property, Austria real estate investor Signa Holding.

Tenants include law firm Moses & Singer, Creative Artists Agency and architect Ted Moudis. The vacancy rate in the building as of May was roughly 15 percent.

Last week, a Community Advisory Committee rejected SL Green’s proposal for a Times Square casino, killing the project. After the vote, Holliday unloaded on committee members, calling the decision a “despicable display of cowardice, lack of leadership, lack of consideration for all the people who would benefit from this proposal.”

The same day, Rithm Capital signed a deal to acquire office landlord Paramount Group for $1.6 billion. The development ended a multi-round bidding process that included interest from Vornado, SL Green, Empire State Realty, and Blackstone.

— Holden Walter-Warner