New York Post Online Edition - December 4, 2003
The giant art deco office tower known as 11 Madison Ave., an icon of the Midtown South skyline, is being sold to Tamir Sapir, owner of litigation-scarred 2 Broadway. Met Life, which built and still owns the 1932 skyscraper, is selling it for $675 million. That's about $310 per square foot for the 2.2 million-square-foot structure, which is the Manhattan headquarters of Credit Suisse First Boston.
If the deal closes by year's end, as expected, it would be the second-largest Manhattan investment sale this year, behind the $1.4 billion sale of the GM Building to Harry Macklowe. Sources said the catalyst for the deal was investor David Werner, who has initiated other purchases for Sapir but who typically does not have a significant equity stake. Sapir's offer for 11 Madison Ave. beat out a field that included S.L. Green, Tishman Speyer, German fund Jamestown, and Aby Rosen's RFR Realty. Sapir could not be reached. Werner declined comment, referring calls to Eastdil broker Douglas Harmon, part of the Eastdil-Lehman Bros. brokerage team that represented Met Life - but Harmon did not return a call.
The 30-story tower is one of those buildings that looks like a landmark but isn't. Filling the whole block between Madison Avenue and Park Avenue South between 24th and 25th streets, its stepped facades loom like Art Deco cliffs over Madison Square Park. CSFB moved into 11 Madison in the 1990s and occupies about 1.5 million square feet.
Sapir, an immigrant from Georgia, also owns 260 and 261 Madison Ave. At 2 Broadway, he was embroiled in lawsuits with the MTA over the agency's long-term net lease of the tower and its costly renovation. The MTA and Sapir's company, ZAR Realty, settled the matter last month.
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