The Ackman-Ziff Real Estate Group, LLC

Real Estate Weekly, April 26, 2000

Simon Ziff, president of The Ackman-Ziff Real Estate Group, LLC, announced that the firm closed a $9.4 million construction loan for the renovation of a five-story cast iron building in the heart of SoHo.

The 33,000 square-foot loft building, with three rental tenants at grade, will have eight new luxury loft condominium apartments on the upper floors. The loan was placed with a commercial bank located in the Midwest.

The Ackman-Ziff Real Estate Group, LLC also arranged an $80 million construction loan and a $30 million mezzanine construction loan for Ian Sehrager Hotels, LLC, an entity owned by NorthStar Capital Investment Corp. and Ian Schrager. Proceeds of the loan were used to renovate the existing 26-story, 463,000 square-foot property into a hotel and to pay off a $26.5 million acquisition loan arranged by Ackman-Ziff earlier this year.

The Henry Hudson Hotel is a through-block building with frontage on both West 57th and West 58th Street between 8th and 9th Avenues on Manhattan's West Side, adjacent to Columbus Center.

Ackman-Ziff secured CORUS Bank, N.A., a Chicago-based bank, as the lead lender and assisted in securing two of the four participants for the $80 million construction loan and secured an institutional investor to provide the $30 million mezzanine loan.