Standard check-in
Hong Kong investor to buy for 15% off: sources
T HE
High Line-straddling Standard Hotel has found a surprise buyer, sources tell The Post: Hong Kong-based wheeler-dealer Goodwin Gaw.
Of perhaps greater interest to the city’s potentially oversaturated hotel market, the purchase price is likely 15 percent less than what the Standard was in contract to sell for in 2014 — although the deal never closed.
Sources said that a fund controlled by Gaw Capital Partners — which is run by Goodwin, 48, and his brother and sister — is in advanced talks to pay $340 million for the marquee property.
Although Gaw has been called the “poster boy for fronting Asian capital to Western markets and Western capital to Asia,” he’s no money-shuffler.
Gaw Capital owns properties valued at $8 billion around the globe. Its American affiliate, Gaw Capital Partners USA, has more than $2.7 billion in gross assets under management — including Los Angeles’ fabled Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel. One of Gaw’s investment funds recently bought the Marriott City Center in Oakland, Calif.
But in an intriguing twist, if the deal for the Standard goes through, the seller won’t be the company that’s been widely — but incorrectly — reported as its current owner.
Standard International, the management company for Standard-branded inns, was reported to be in contract to buy the hotel for $400 million from Dune Capital Management and Greenfield Partners in early 2014.
However, it turns out that the deal was never completed — despite news reports as recent as two months ago that claimed Standard International had bought the hotel from Dune and Greenfield.
The alleged purchase was “incorrect information,” Standard International marketing and communications VP Corey Tuttle told us by e-mail. “The original owners still own the property.”
Tuttle had “no comment at this time” regarding Gaw’s potential purchase. He didn’t provide contact information for André
Balazs, the visionary hotelier who founded the Standard brand and still owns 20 percent of Standard International.
JLL’s Jeffrey Davis, who’s marketing the Standard with his firm’s Gilda Perez-Alvarado, responded to our questions with a “no comment.” Goodwin Gaw didn’t respond to an e-mail.
Why would the Standard sell for $60 million less than it was valued at in 2014?
Three different hotel industry analysts told us all of its vital numbers — revenue per available room, occupancy rate, and food-andbeverage revenue — were “down significantly” since early 2014 due to greater competition from new supply and Airbnb.
The authoritative STR hotel marketing survey reported that nearly 16,000 new rooms will soon come on line in the city on top of the Big Apple’s existing alltime high of 115,145 rooms.
Competition’s especially fierce in the hip-andtrendy, party-central class of hotels that includes The Standard. It made news back in 2009, when guests were spotted having sex in the windows over the High Line — but this summer, the amorous window action shifted to Ian Schrager’s
new Public Hotel on Chrystie Street.
Cushman & Wakefield hotel-sale specialist Tom McConnell, who’s not involved at the Standard, said that a price cut from $400 million to $340 million for it would be “similar to the diminution in values that we’ve seen around the city.”
He said the Standard was particularly vulnerable to competition on the foodand-beverage front. “The Standard is like a big restaurant complex with venues at the top and on the bottom, with hotel rooms sandwiched in between. I’d venture to say that it does more food and beverage income as a percentage of revenue than any other hotel in town,” McConnell said.
In one of Midtown’s biggest new leases so far this year, Travel Leaders Group Elite Division is moving its headquarters to Paramount Group’s 1633 Broadway at West 51st Street. Travel Leaders’ component companies, Tzell Travel Group and Protravel International, have signed a 16.5-year lease for 106,000 square feet.
Travel Leaders Group is the country’s largest travel agency company. It will move from 119 W. 40th St. and 515 Madison Ave. The tenant was represented by Colliers International’s Robert Tunis and Eric Ferriello. Paramount Group was repped inhouse by Doug Neye and by CBRE’s Stephen B. Siegel, Paul Amrich, Patrice Meagher, Rob Hill, Howard Fiddle and Emily Jones.
Terms were not released, but the space was listed at $85 per square foot. The deal for the 35th and 36th floors leaves about 175,000 square feet of direct space available in the 2.6 million-square-foot tower.
Private equity firm Energy Capital Partners is the latest tenant to join the parade to the prebuilt office suites at One World Trade Center. The company signed for 6,173 square feet on the 48th floor.
The Durst Organization, the Port Authority’s partner in the tower, dreamed up the prebuilt program around four years ago to help draw smaller companies needing 2,100 to 27,320 square feet on the 3-million-square-foot tower’s middle floors. Starting with only two floors, 45 and 46, it’s since grown to nine floors encompassing more than 381,000 square feet.
Asking rents for the prebuilt floors are reported in the $70s to $80s per square foot.