Al Faisal Holding signs $270M loan modification for Times Square hotel

Al Faisal Holding through the entity MTS NY Lessee, L.P. as borrower signed a refi loan with lender Mack Real Estate Group through the entity CMTG Lender 24 LLC valued at $270 million for the Manhattan at Times Square Hotel (H3) at 790 Seventh Avenue in Midtown West, Manhattan.
The deal closed on October 10, 2023 and was recorded on October 16, 2023. The prior lender was Mack Real Estate Group which held debt that had an original loan amount of $290 million.
The property has 461,591 square feet of built space according to a PincusCo analysis of city data. The loan price per built square foot is $584 per the PincusCo analysis. (The price per square foot analysis is the transaction price divided by square feet as reported in public records and assumes no air rights have been sold.)
The owner bought the property on February 13, 2015, for $513 million. The signatory for Al Faisal Holding was Mohammed Abdelqader Darwish Al Ramahi. The signatory for Mack Real Estate Group was Priyanka Garg.
The property is the 22-story, 685-room Manhattan at Times Square Hotel, built in 1962. Al Faisal Holding, a private company founded and controlled by the Qatari billionaire Faisal Bin Qassim Al Thani, owns Al-Rayyan Tourism Investment Co., known as ARTIC, a wholly owned division of Al Faisal Holding.

Real Estate Alert reported in January that Al Faisal Holding was looking to either sell or refinance the hotel, which the article said was valued at about $300 million, down from the $513 million sale price in 2015.  ARTIC’s CEO Tarek El Sayed is named as a signatory in the documents but did not actually sign them.

Prior sales and revenue

The owner according to the Department of Housing Preservation and Development is Brendan Moraes, head officer. The business entity is Mts Ny Propco Lp.

The property

The hotel building in Midtown West has 461,591 square feet of built space according to a PincusCo analysis of city data. The parcel has frontage of 200 feet and is 171 feet deep with a total lot size of 33,265 square feet. The lot is irregular. The zoning is C6-7 which allows for up to 15 times floor area ratio (FAR) for commercial and up to 10 times FAR for residential with inclusionary housing. The city-designated market value for the property in 2022 is $101.2 million.

Violations and lawsuits

There were no lawsuits or bankruptcies filed against the property for the past 24 months. In addition, according to city public data, the property has received one DOB violation and $30,570 in OATH penalties in the last year.

Development

There are no active new building construction projects or major alteration projects with initial costs more than $1 million on this tax lot.

The neighborhood

In Midtown West, The majority, or 75 percent of the 75.9 million square feet of commercial built space are office buildings, with hotel buildings next occupying 14 percent of the space. In sales, Midtown West has the 3rd highest sale turnover among other neighborhoods in the city with $3 billion in sales volume in the last two years. For development, Midtown West is the 2nd most active neighborhood among other neighborhoods. It had 18.3 million square feet of commercial and multi-family construction under development in the last two years, which represents 24 percent of the neighborhood’s built space. There was one pre-foreclosure suit filed among other hotel buildings in the past 12 months.

The block

On this tax block, PincusCo has identified the owners of two of the 14 commercial properties representing 70,444 square feet of the 1,137,829 square feet. The two identified owners are Robert Gilardian and Dean Poll.
There are no active new building construction projects on this tax block.

The majority, or 69 percent of the 1.1 million square feet of built space are hotel buildings, with elevator buildings next occupying 22 percent of the space.

Direct link to Acris document. link