More to Chrysler than meets the eye

Did you read about the $900 million Chrysler Building purchase? Or was it $1.1 billion?

Nope — you read, including here, that Aby Rosen and Michael Fuchs’ RFR Realty and Austrian real estate giant Signa Holding GmbH paid only $151 million for the leasehold.

But what they paid, and what the landmark tower truly costs them, are different things.

It’s well known that the leasehold with landowner Cooper Union, under a contract signed in 1998, jumped from just $7.5 million in 2018 to $32.5 million in 2019. It’s been reported as well that the ground rent rises to $41 million in 2028 and to $55 million in 2038.

It’s less recognized that the “starting” rent of $32.5 million is like having a $750 million mortgage at 4.5 percent interest — meaning that the $151 million buy is more like a $900 million buy, or roughly $1,000 per square foot for a tower be- lieved to be losing about $20 million a year.

And it will only get pricier after that. Sources revealed that starting in 2047, a series of “fair market” rent reviews will kick in periodically and result in increases that can’t now be predicted.

There are shorter-term costs as well. Chrysler’s office floors are about 81 percent leased. The new owners’ lease-up costs can reach $200 million, including for tenants’ work-letters to modernize floors, upgrades to antiquated systems, plus brokers’ fees.

Rosen can’t easily revive the top floors’ Cloud Club, however. The tower offers ample opportunities for hospitality uses — in particular, the huge fifth-floor roof setback marked by a tall flagpole overlooking Lexington Avenue and facing Grand Central Terminal.

Meanwhile, RFR and Signa appear off to a good start bringing more cash into Chrysler. We’re told that a significant retail lease we ear- lier predicted at the northeast corner of Lexington Avenue and 42nd Street has been complete — for Amazon Go, the mega-company’s growing “convenience store” chain for a wide variety of goods from Amazon’s online product lines.

Amazon Go is cash-free and cashier-free — customers pay by scanning their personal barcode from an app.

The Tishman Speyer brokers for the space didn’t get back to us.