![]() The new owners, who put in very little of their own money, infuriated tenants as they showered hundreds of residents with eviction notices. Tishman Speyer Properties, which owns Rockefeller Center and operates on four continents, and its partner BlackRock paid $5.4 billion, a sum that many housing experts found shocking and unsustainable. In return for a large property tax break and the city’s power of condemnation, the insurance company kept rents low.Īt the height of the real estate boom in 2006, MetLife sold the property to the highest bidder. Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village was built after World War II by MetLife for returning veterans. Blackstone also agreed not to pursue a condominium conversion or to build new towers on the tree-lined property. In return for maintaining the affordable block, the city agreed to waive $77 million in mortgage recording taxes and to provide Blackstone with a $144 million low-interest loan through the Housing Development Corporation. Still, more than half the apartments in the complex, which sits east of First Avenue between 14th and 23rd Streets, now lease at market rents, or more than $4,200 a month for a two-bedroom apartment, a prohibitive sum for many middle-class families. For example, a family of three earning up to $62,150 a year would pay about $1,553 in rent for a two-bedroom. An additional 500 apartments would be set aside for families making less. A family of three earning up to $128,210 a year, for example, would pay a rent of $3,205 a month for a two-bedroom apartment. ![]() Under the new agreement with the de Blasio administration, 4,500 apartments would be reserved for middle-income families. The debt-laden owners ultimately lost the complex to their lender when they ran out of money. That sale set off an outcry over the loss of affordable housing to speculators in New York, as the buyers sought to replace longtime, rent-regulated residents with tenants who paid far higher rents. The Blackstone deal, expected to be signed by Tuesday morning, stands in stark contrast to the last time the complex sold, in 2006, for a record-setting $5.4 billion. The 110 plain redbrick buildings that make up the complex have been at the center of a roiling debate over housing in a city where prices have sailed beyond the reach of not only the poor but also many middle-income New Yorkers. “We weren’t going to lose StuyTown on our watch.” de Blasio said in a statement released on Monday afternoon. “This has been a priority for us since Day 1,” Mr. Up to now, tenant activists and elected officials have feared that Stuyvesant Town’s 65-year history as a middle-class bastion was ending. de Blasio, who has made affordable housing a central tenet of his administration. The agreement, which covers a high-profile complex that symbolized the rapidly changing nature of New York City housing, represents a victory for Mr. The sale, to the Blackstone Group, a Wall Street investment firm and one of the country’s largest landlords, includes an unusual regulatory agreement with the administration of Mayor Bill de Blasio that would ensure that a block of 5,000 apartments would be affordable for the next 20 years for families of teachers, construction workers, firefighters and others who have traditionally made their homes at Stuyvesant Town. Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village, the largest apartment complex in Manhattan, is expected to be sold for more than $5.3 billion, an agreement that will preserve nearly half the 11,232-unit complex for middle-class families, according to officials involved in the negotiations.
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