New York's iconic Flatiron Building, located in midtown Manhattan, has been sold at auction for $190 million, ending a dispute between its owners that had kept it empty for four years.
The buyer is Jacob Garlick, founding partner of Abraham Trust, a fund specializing in different investment operations, who, as soon as the sale was completed, told NY1 television: "It has been a dream that I have had throughout my life since I was 14 years old. Our mission will be to always respect its integrity", in reference to its historical and architectural uniqueness.
The auction had only two protagonists: Garlick and another real estate capitalist, Jeffrey Gural, of GFP Real Estate; According to the same chain, the bid lasted 45 minutes, in which the two tycoons were raising the price of the adversary by half a million.
Numerous people, both from the real estate sector and architecture lovers, came to observe this unique auction that had been ordered by a judge to end an endless dispute between its co-owners, who were four real estate companies (GFP among them) and a businessman .
In any case, the conditions of the auction are leonine: if Garlick does not put a 10% price on the table on Friday, that is, 19 million, the building goes to the second bidder, and if he does not have that amount either, it is auctioned again .
The Flatiron, built in 1902 on a triangular base (at the junction of Broadway and Fifth Avenue) and which looks slender facing Madison Square Park, has been empty since its last tenant, McMillan Publishers, left in 2019. that occupied its 21 heights.
It is not clear what the new owner will do for the skyscraper, whether it will be an office building as was its initial function, a luxury hotel or a luxury apartment building.
The loser Gural, in an imitation of the famous fable of the fox and the grapes, said after the auction: "I'm kind of hallucinated, really. I never thought someone would bid so high for the building. It's a beautiful property, but it needs 100 millions to get it ready, now it's basically empty.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project
