Thursday, February 21, 2008

New York's GM Building Could Fetch a Record Price

NEW YORK (AP)
-- A prestigious Fifth Avenue skyscraper is up for sale and could fetch
$3 billion or more, which would be a record price for a U.S. office
building.


The General Motors building, a 50-story tower built in 1968 at the
southeast corner of Central Park across from the Plaza Hotel, occupies
a full city block and is best known as the home of two retail tourist
attractions, the FAO Schwarz toy emporium and Apple's glass cube store.


General Motors Corp. sold the building in 1991 and the automaker now occupies only a few floors.


Real estate industry experts said its sale price would easily exceed
the previous record of $1.8 billion, which was set in 2006 by a
41-story building six blocks further south on Fifth Avenue.


One of the potential buyers for the tower is real-estate investor
Joseph Cayre, who told The Wall Street Journal that he and unidentified
Middle Eastern partners had put in a bid of at least $3 billion. Cayre
did not immediately return a call from The Associated Press.

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