$130M in Financing Secured for Manhattan’s 800 KSF Paramount Building

By Barbra Murray, Contributing Editor

The Paramount Building, a landmark Manhattan office tower carrying the address of 1501 Broadway in Times Square, is among the latest assets to benefit from the lending community’s fondness for New York City. Relying on the assistance of real estate finance and advisory firm Meridian Capital Group L.L.C., Paramount Leasehold L.P., owner of the 788,000-square-foot property, obtained $130 million in financing, a portion of which will be used to fund an improvement program. 

Cantor Commercial Real Estate provided the ownership with a 10-year full-term interest-only loan with an enviably low annual fixed-rate of 3.16 percent.

“The irreplaceable location, credit quality and leverage [attracted lenders],” Keith Kurland, senior vice president with Meridian, told Commercial Property Executive. 

Paramount Leasehold plans to invest in excess of $50 million of the loan proceeds in the renovation and repositioning of the 33-story high-rise. The Art Deco-style building, which made its debut in 1926 as Paramount Pictures’ East Coast home base, got its last makeover in 2006. With Tobin | Parnes Design Enterprises onboard to help maintain the architectural integrity of the Rapp and Rapp-designed structure, Paramount Leasehold is planning a transformation that will help reel in the growing number of office users seeking premier, modernized accommodations.

The capital markets appear to be wide-open to real estate endeavors in New York City, from purchases to developments for veritably all asset types; it’s not just about apartments anymore. And Meridian has been keeping busy facilitating deal after deal for clients. Earlier this week the firm announced it had negotiated $115 million in acquisition and construction financing for the Flatotel hotel, which the new owner plans to convert to a luxury condominium community. In March, Meridian arranged a $128 million loan for the acquisition of a development site on First Ave. in the Murray Hill neighborhood, and joined forces with Eastdil Secured to orchestrate $275 million in permanent financing for the purchase of the fee position in the 1,300-room Milford Hotel. 

“Having recently placed debt and equity for a wide variety of transactions including office, ground-up development, retail, hotel and multi-family, there is no dearth of capital in the New York City market,” Kurland added. “The challenge remains in marrying the deal with the right financing solution.”

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