The iconic Flatiron Building was bought for $161 million at auction Tuesday afternoon by its majority owners, who immediately floated plans to convert part of the the office building for residential use.
Jeffrey Gural, Chairman of GFP Real Estate, made the winning bid to keep the Flatiron at a packed outdoor auction held on the steps of the Supreme Court. GFP, Sorgente Group and ABS Partners already owned 75% and beat out six other bidders for full ownership of the property. Their previous $189.5 million bid narrowly lost two months ago.
“I saved $30 million, I feel okay,” Gural joked to reporters afterwards. “We overpaid, but not by much. I had no idea what to expect.”
Gural said the next step would be to convert the Flatiron into apartments, either putting them in the top half of the building and leaving offices on the bottom, or making it entirely residential.
“You know, everybody talks about the city accelerating, converting office buildings to apartments, and here we are ready to go,” he said.
Gural added that the conversion would require a special permit from the Department of City Planning, saying, “It’s just one more problem to deal with.”
It’s perhaps the most famous building in the city so far to announce such plans, which can entail a complex and time-consuming process.
Mayor Adams and Gov. Hochul previously touted workplace conversions as part of their “Making New York Work for Everyone” plan. In January, Adams issued recommendations to help facilitate such conversions, which could potentially lead to housing for 40,000 New Yorkers in the next decade if enacted, he said. A proposed tax break for office-to-residential conversions did not make it into Hochul’s final budget late last month.
Bidding on Tuesday started at $50 million and the proceedings were over in less than half an hour.
It was a much less hectic affair than the first auction, when relative unknown Jacob Garlick of Virginia stunned the city real estate scene with a…
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