Feil Organization Closes $70M Loan on 251 Park Avenue South
By Danielle Balbi September 23, 2015 2:51 pm
reprints
The long-awaited sale of Extell Development Company’s 16-story office property at 251 Park Avenue South has finally closed.
The Feil Organization took out $70 million in financing from M&T Bank to acquire the office building, which is located between East 20th and East 21st Streets, on Sept. 11, according to documents filed with the city yesterday.
No deed is visible in city records but The Feil Organization appears to have purchased 251 PAS LLC, which holds the title to the property, from Extell.
The first chunk of the debt, a $45 million loan from M&T, is being used to replace a $43 million loan provided by Deutsche Bank in January 2014. The remaining $25 million of the debt is documented in city records as a second mortgage.
Frank Ring and Michael Ring, of the family-run development firm F.M. Ring Associates, inherited a 50 percent stake in the 103,384-square-foot building from their father, Leo Ring, in 2007.
Leo Ring’s former business partner Robert Eisner owned the other 50 percent stake, which Extell bought in 2011 after Eisner passed away, as has been widely reported.
Extell Chief Executive Officer Gary Barnett later publicly battled the Ring family for ownership of the building—along with a number of other properties in the F.M. Ring portfolio.
Mr. Barnett sued F.M. Ring for mismanagement of the office property, and eventually a court ruled that the property be sold at auction.
The struggle over the property finally came to an end in 2014 when the two firms cancelled the auction and settled the dispute. Mr. Barnett’s firm purchased 251 Park Avenue South in its entirety, according to Joshua Stein, the lawyer who handled the auction process for the building.
Mr. Stein said that when working on the auction he expected the building to sell between $50 million and $100 million. “If you look at this indebtedness, it started at $43 million and it is now at $70 million, so it’s in line with the numbers I would expect to see,” he noted.
Representatives for M&T and Extell declined to comment. A representative for Frank and Michael Ring did not respond to inquiries. Jeffrey Feil, the CEO of The Feil Organization, did not return a request for comment.
