TV Station New Tang Dynasty Buys Chelsea Office Building for $31M

The sale of the 12-story building was a loss for Samson, which bought it in 2012 for $54 million from Thor Equities.

Spokespeople for NTD and Samson did not immediately respond to requests for comment. 

John Tang, an adherent of the Falun Gong religious movement, founded The Epoch Times newspaper in 2000 and launched the television production company the following year, naming it after the dynasty that reigned for three centuries in China’s golden age, according to NTD’s website.

The nonprofit media group went through a renaissance during the 2020 presidential campaign, pulling in $8.4 million in contributions from undisclosed donors while it spun conspiracy theories about COVID-19 vaccines, QAnon and other topics. 

NTD describes itself as “an independent voice in a media landscape controlled by corporate interests.” It currently lists its New York office on the seventh floor of the Caxton Building at 229 West 28th Street, about a block away from its new acquisition.

It’s unclear if brokers were involved in the deal.

NTD isn’t the only tenant buying property as overseas capital and a spate of deals with owner-occupiers have dominated investment sales activity in Manhattan. Prada and Gucci became the poster children for the phenomenon when they bought $1.8 billion worth of retail space on Fifth Avenue in separate deals from Jeff Sutton and SL Green Realty in the span of a few weeks.

The luxury fashion houses’ eye-popping deal accounted for nearly half the borough’s $2.2 billion commercial sales volume in the first quarter of the year, as Bisnow reported. 

A number of smaller deals have also bolstered the trend, including Japanese manga publisher Kodansha’s $27 million purchase of 25 East 22nd Street and Korean company MediaWill’s $37 million deal to buy 110 West 32nd Street. 

Abigail Nehring can be reached at anehring@commercialobserver.com.