MTA seeking brokers to sell its properties

Real Estate Weekly, Dec 29, 2004 by Elaine Misonzhnik

Come 2005, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority will begin a major disposition campaign. Earlier this year, the agency issued a Request for Proposals, hoping to hire an experienced real estate consultant to help it use many of its out-of-service stations, railway land sites and parking lots to close its large bud-get gap.

With the response deadline looming on December 30, brokers at some of the city's largest firms have been working hard to get this assignment.

According to an MTA spokesman, the agency needs someone who will identify all of its marketable real estate assets along the Long Island Rail Road, Metro North and New York City Transit rail lines, as well as around its bridges and tunnels.

"We are looking for somebody to do the inventory for all of the properties that we own and then we would look at [possibly] selling them," the spokesman said. Among the 14,000 such properties, MTA is hoping to market as possible development sites rail road stations in Bay Shore, Hicksville, Murray Hill, Ronkonkoma, St. Albans and Blue Point in Long Island; rail road stations and parking facilities in Mamaroneck, Beacon, Southeast, Harriman, Otisville, Middletown and Port Chester in Westchester and Connecticut; and a NYC Transit-owned land site at 54th Street and Ninth Avenue in New York City.

Judging from the Request for Proposals, the agency is looking to hire a large, established brokerage firm, with plenty of experience in the New York market and the surrounding suburbs. Each applicant is asked to submit general experience of the firm and the number of employees on its staff, the firm's average work load and how much of its business comes from the outer boroughs and Long Island and Westchester counties.

The MTA hopes to raise more than $1 billion with its real estate disposition plan.