TIAA Refinances RXR’s 75 Rockefeller Plaza With $300M Package

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Scott Rechler’s RXR Realty refinanced its headquarters at 75 Rockefeller Plaza with a $300 million package from pension fund Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association of America (TIAA), according to records filed today with the New York City Department of Finance.

The stack includes a $92 million mezzanine piece, sources told Commercial Observer, and it refinances two previous J.P. Morgan Chase loans, totaling $184 million, from Sept. 30 2014 and another $23.7 million loan provided by the bank on Nov. 1, 2016. TIAA rounded out the transaction with a new $280,000 gap mortgage. The package was provided by TH Real Estate, an affiliate of global investment manager Nuveen, which is the investment arm of TIAA.

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J.P. Morgan assigned the debt to TIAA and it was then split into two portions—$148.6 million and $59.4 million. The $148.6 million loan is comprised of a $83.5M A-note and a $65.1 million B-note while the $59 million is the combination of four notes—$23.7 million, $4.8 million, $30.6 million and the new $280,000 gap mortgage.

RXR, which controls the 32-story building through a 99-year, triple-net ground lease, completed a $150 million renovation of the building and reopened it in February. The firm has moved its headquarters from 1330 6th Avenue into a 14,000-square-foot space on the 14th floor of the tower—with an alternate address at 15 West 51st Street, between Avenue of the Americas and Fifth Avenue. 

“TH Real Estate is pleased to add the most modernized office building in Rockefeller Center to our portfolio and to continue our existing relationship with a premier property owner in RXR Realty,” Michael A. Lembo, a senior director at TH Real Estate, told CO.

Commercial Observer reported in February that brokerage Cushman & Wakefield leased 40,000 square feet of retail space to American Girl and 185,343 square feet to Bank of America and Merrill Lynch Wealth Management (an arm of the bank) as the anchor tenant of the 623,000-square-foot building.

Most of the ground floor and the entire retail basement is occupied by American Girl, but there is a remaining 5,000 square feet on the ground floor, which features up to 24-foot ceiling heights, as CO previously reported.

Erste Group Bank AG, a Vienna, Austria-based financial services provider, has leased the entire 12th floor—14,000 square feet of space—as CO reported in August.

Officials at RXR declined to comment on the transaction.