711 Fifth Ave., the Coca-Cola Building/ Image provided by Cushman & Wakefield, photo by Andrew Gordon Photography
NEW YORK CITY—In a positive sign for the market, Elie Schwartz and Simon Singer's New York-based commercial real estate firm Nightingale Properties signed a deal to acquire the Coca-Cola Building at 711 Fifth Ave. for $907 million. Commercial Observer was the first to report the news. Although the deal has not been announced, the facts in this article were confirmed by sources with knowledge of the sale.
Wafra Group, which is owned by the Kuwaiti pension fund, the Public Institution for Social Security of Kuwait, is Nightingale's partner in the deal. Wafra has joined Nightingale in prior investments as first reported in The Real Deal, when the talks of this sale initially emerged.
In 1983, the Coca-Cola company acquired the 15-story office building as part of its acquisition of Columbia Pictures.
The building is located in Manhattan's famed Plaza District, on Fifth Avenue at E. 55th Street. As reported in GlobeSt.com, in December 2018, the Coca-Cola Company retained Cushman & Wakefield's Doug Harmon, Adam Spies and Kevin Donner to market the property. At the time, less than six months ago, Harmon noted that the Neo-Classical building constructed in 1927 was rich in history. Stating there were few such trophy properties with redevelopment potential, he predicted strong demand.
The 354,000-square-foot building which traded at $907 million, priced the building at $2,562 per square foot. The amount reaching towards $1 billion makes the sale thus far Manhattan's highest priced office and retail property since the Harmon team's 30 Hudson Yards $2.2 billion deal, where they represented AT&T's WarnerMedia in its sale leaseback with Related Companies. Again exceeding the $1 billion level, that deal was the highest priced sale since the Harmon team's $2.4 billion sale of Chelsea Market to Google in 2018, where they represented the seller Jamestown.
The Coca-Cola Building transactions is expected to close in about 60 days.
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Betsy Kim
Betsy Kim was the bureau chief, East Coast, and New York City reporter for Real Estate Forum and GlobeSt.com. As a lawyer and journalist, Betsy has worked as the director of editorial and content for LexisNexis Lawyers.com, a TV/multi-media journalist for NBC and CBS affiliated TV stations in the Midwest, and an associate producer at Court TV.
