Boosts for Solow, Extell Midtown projects

Powerful developers just took control of properties they needed to build long-in-coming mega-projects on two different blocks between Fifth and Sixth avenues.

Gary Barnett’s Extell Development Company bought 4-story 32 W. 48th St., former home to the Plaza Arcade diamond mini-mall, for $40 million, and at the same time closed on title to several adjacent buildings an air rights to another. The deals popped up in city records Friday night.

“We now have everything we need to build,” Barnett said on Sunday. Tentative plans call for a hotel with a “few hundred keys” and stores, he said.

The purchases totaled $85 million. Extell also signed a $63.8 million mortgage spreader agreement with Bank of the Ozarks for the six adjacent properties — 30, 32, 36 and 38 W. 48th St. and 25 and 27 W. 47th St. The new project will connect West 48th Street with the 47th Street diamond block.

Barnett said demolition leading to construction should begin within six months. The plan will apparently spare famed Szechuanese restaurant Wu Liang Ye at No. 36, from which Extell only bought air rights.

Extell is also working on skyscrapers from the Upper West Side to downtown Brooklyn. It’s most visible one is the “Nordstrom Tower” aka Central Park Tower, rising to 1550 feet at 225 W. 57th St.

Meanwhile, Sheldon Solow finally booted Metropolitan Antiques from 10 W. 57th St. The schlocky store, which plead guilty to illegally selling $4.5 million in elephant ivory, was the last holdout tenant to stand in Solow’s way to build a 52-story hotel, condos and retail Tower.

The conviction gave Solow the right to evict the store. Metropolitan fought back in court but the shop quietly vanished in the past week.

Solow’s new building will go up across the street from his iconic office tower 9 West and from an apartment Tower he’s putting up at 7 W. 57th.