Qatari Fund Buys Park Lane Hotel for $623M
$450B sovereign wealth fund adds iconic Central Park South trophy.
The Qatar Investment Authority has acquired the Park Lane Hotel on Central Park South for $623M, PincusCo reported.
The $450M sovereign wealth fund did not indicate whether it plans to convert a portion of the 46-story building into condos. The purchase price is close to the $654M that Malaysian developer Jho Low and the Witkoff Group paid for the trophy in 2013 with plans for a condo conversion.
In 2016, the 631-room hotel, located at 36 Central Park South and developed in 1967 by Harry Helmsley, was embroiled in one of the largest global fraud cases in history—Malaysia’s $4.5B 1MDB scandal—when the US government made moves to seize the property.
The US DOJ accused Low, now a fugitive that the Malaysian government is trying to extradite from China, of being the mastermind of a scheme to siphon billions from the Malaysian development fund. The Chinese government has denied harboring Low, but cellphone video surfaced in 2019 showing him at Disneyland Shanghai.
The other owners put the Park Lane up for sale in 2017 with an asking price that was reportedly as high as $1B. When the sale didn’t materialize, Witkoff and his partners refinanced the Park Lane in 2019 with a $615M loan from Deutsche Bank and JPMorgan.
The Qatari Investment Authority (QIA) has been busy making large transactions in Manhattan’s real estate market in recent years.
In March, Blackstone acquired a 49% stake in One Manhattan West from Brookfield and the QIA, valuing the 67-story office building at $2.85B. The 2.1M SF property is part of Manhattan West, Brookfield and QIA’s 7M SF commercial complex on the West Side.
In December, the Qatari fund partnered with RXR and Macquarie Capital Principal Finance to provide $261M in preferred equity investment on an $850M deal to purchase three apartment buildings developed by the late Sheldon Solow.
GO Partners, a joint venture between Orbach Affordable Housing Solutions and Black Spruce Management, purchased the three properties, One Sutton Place North, Two Sutton Place North and One East River Place.
In 2019, the Qatari fund bought the 238-room St. Regis Hotel from Marriott International for $310M. The sovereign wealth fund also provided $162M in mezzanine debt on 111 West 57th Street, a Billionaires’ Row condo tower, in 2017.