http://www.nypost.com/p/news/busines...uOt1pnLp7MKbQI
Drake's new take
Macklowes, new partner buy out 10 investors
By LOIS WEISS
January 6, 2010
The fat lady hasn't yet sung for the former Drake Hotel site -- or the Macklowe family's plans to develop it.
Harry Macklowe and his son, William, appear to have come up with a way to keep control of the vacant Midtown lot on which the Drake Hotel used to sit and has since become an undeveloped eyesore and symbol of the Macklowes' financial troubles.
The Macklowes' development company, Macklowe Properties, is teaming up with Los Angeles-based private-equity firm CIM Group to pay off 10 debtholders who hold slices of a $510 million loan on the property as the family apparently looks to stage a bit of a New York City real estate comeback.
The agreement with CIM would enable the Macklowes to move forward with their development plans for the Drake site, which sits on Park Avenue between 56th and 57th streets and is where the Macklowes want to construct a 60-story, 600,000 square foot tower
.
Macklowe in 2006 spent more than $440 million buying the Drake Hotel, and has since torn it down.
Along the way he has also assembled a collection of adjacent properties and air rights along East 57th Street, creating what some have called an awkward front for a future development that was to include ground-level retail as well as an office tower.
Macklowe had trouble acquiring all of the buildings needed to create a space attractive for a major retailer such as Nordstrom, which at one point was in talks to open its first New York City store there.
Among many in real-estate circles, the Drake site is considered to be one of the city's most desirable locations, though these days it is little more than a vacant lot bounded by plywood walls.