The New York Flatiron goes up for auction
Il Flatironone of Manhattan’s historic skyscrapers, it’s about to go to auction. The owners are unable to agree on the future of the building and a New York Supreme Court judge has entrusted Mannion Auctions the sale to the highest bidder of the iconic ‘iron’ che has been a city monument since 1966.
The auction is scheduled for March 22nd. The Italian group is also among the owners Source that together with GFP Real Estate, Newmark, ABS Real Estate Partnersowns 75% of the steel skyscraper and wants to part ways with the fifth partner, Nathan Silverstein, which holds the remaining 25%. For years, in fact, the five owners have been arguing in vain about what to do with the building after years of unresolved discussions about what to do with the building.
The building is empty: in 2019 the British publishing house Macmillan had decided to leave the building. Two years later, the four real estate companies sued Silverstein, claiming that his decisions (or no decisions) had caused the building to remain deserted. The latter in turn had sued Newmark for attempting to lease the “iron” to Knotel, a company for flexible offices, below market price.
Sale open to the public, but an agreement is being sought
The March 22 sale will be open to the public, but the four owners who want Silverstein out aim to keep control. “We don’t want to sell. We want to dissolve the partnership,” GFP chairman Jeffrey Gural said. “The idea is to keep ownership by getting 25%.”
Known for being the slimmest of New York’s skyscrapers before the Manhattan skyline was transformed by the very tall and super-thin towers that shade Central Park, the Flatiron owes its characteristic triangular shape to its location at the intersection of Fifth and 23rd streets, right where Broadway, one of the island’s few diagonal thoroughfares, runs from West to East Manhattan.
Designed by architects Daniel Burnham e Frederick Dinkelberg and completed in 1902 it was for several years, with its 21 floors distributed over 87 meters, the tallest skyscraper in New York. It was initially the headquarters of the Fuller Companythe construction company that invented the modern skyscraper, but for decades – i.e. from the entry in 1969 of St. Martin’s Press and then by Macmillan – had become one of the outposts of the book industry, a place where the most influential writers of the time were celebrated and where thousands of authors signed contracts for their debut.
The Sorgente group, founded by Walter Mainetti, has been at the center of an intervention by the Bank of Italy in recent years. In January 2022, however, the institute declared the extraordinary administration of SGR source which – after the sale of a company branch containing 17 real estate funds to Castello Sgr – became part of Sorgente Group Italia again.