Bobby Cayre and Edmond M. Safra are teaming as much as purchase the landmark Scribner Constructing after it went again to the lender in a foreclosures sale.
Cayre’s Aurora Capital Associates and Safra’s AVRS Companions are in contract to purchase the 69,000-square-foot constructing at 597 Fifth Avenue, The Actual Deal has discovered. The contract value was not recognized, however the sale of the Midtown workplace and retail property is anticipated to shut in March, per servicer commentary on Morningstar.
Membership Monaco occupies the complete retail portion of the 13-story property, however the workplace portion is totally vacant, in response to advertising and marketing supplies. A JLL group together with Andrew Scandalios, David Giancola and Drew Isaacson brokered the deal.
Cayre and JLL declined to remark. AVRS didn’t instantly reply to a request for remark.
The lender took over the constructing and the adjoining 3 East forty eighth Road in a June foreclosures public sale after Joe Sitt’s Thor Equities defaulted on the CMBS mortgage. The newest appraisal, from March 2025, valued the two-building property at $61 million, per Morningstar. (The smaller constructing will not be a part of the deal.)
That’s a steep drop from the $108.5 million Joe Sitt paid for the Scribner and its six-story neighbor in 2011. Sitt mixed the parcels to create a big Fifth Avenue retail footprint in a guess on sky-high rents. UBS originated the $105 million mortgage in 2014, when the property was valued at $180 million.
Thor defaulted on the mortgage in 2020, and a trustee for the CMBS bondholders sued Thor in 2023, claiming the owner refused to place cash into the buildings. Unpaid curiosity and costs swelled the buildings’ whole debt to $151 million by the point of the foreclosures sale, in response to courtroom paperwork.
The constructing carries a storied pedigree. It as soon as served because the headquarters of Charles Scribner’s Sons, the publishing home behind literary heavyweights equivalent to Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Kurt Vonnegut. Within the a long time since Scribner decamped, the tackle has hosted a extra eclectic roster, together with Anthony Weiner’s ill-fated mayoral marketing campaign and the scandal-scarred information agency Cambridge Analytica.
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Thor Equities’ 597 Fifth Ave value cut in half
Lender accuses Thor of abandoning historic Scribner Building
Thor delinquent on $105M loan at 597 Fifth
