AYA Acquisition pays $54.7M for hotel in Midtown West HNA Group lost in foreclosure

AYA Acquisition through the entity Highgate 2 Hotel LLC paid $54.7 million for three commercial condominium units including hotel and retail at 66 West 45th Street in Midtown West, Manhattan. The expected use is cash flowing. The former owner was HNA Group which lost it in a foreclosure auction.
The deal closed on August 28, 2025 and was recorded on September 4, 2025. The three properties have 71,823 square feet of built space according to a PincusCo analysis of city data. The sale price per built square foot is $762 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 signatory for the court handling the foreclosure of the HNA Group asset was the referee, Jeffrey R. Miller . The signatory for AYA Acquisition was Amir Shriki . The contract date was July 26, 2024. Chang Hwa Commercial Bank and Hua Nan Commercial Bank filed a pre-foreclosure action in 2021, 850050/2021, which resulted in this sale.

Prior sales and revenue

Prior to this transaction, PincusCo has no record that the buyer AYA Acquisition had purchased any other properties and has no record it sold any properties over the past 24 months.
The seller HNA Group had not purchased any other properties and had not sold any properties over the same time period.

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 $2.2 billion in sales volume in the last two years. For development, Midtown West is the 2nd most active neighborhood among other neighborhoods. It had 38 million square feet of commercial and multi-family construction under development in the last two years, which represents 50 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 the tax block of 66 West 45th Street, PincusCo has identified the owners of 11 of the 21 commercial properties representing 890,430 square feet of the 1,561,700 square feet. The largest owner is Keck Seng Investments, followed by Arc Global and then Joseph P. Day Realty.
On the tax block, there were two new building construction projects totaling 246,756 square feet. The largest is a 310-unit, 138,345 square-foot hotel/dormitory/shelter (R-1) building submitted by Fortuna Realty Group and filed by Morris Moinian with plans filed October 2, 2015 and permitted October 6, 2021. The second largest is a 125-unit, 108,411 square-foot residential (R-2) building submitted by Hiwin Group USA and filed by Harry Song with plans filed June 16, 2025 and it has not been permitted yet.

The majority, or 49 percent of the 1.6 million square feet of built space are office buildings, with hotel buildings next occupying 45 percent of the space.

The buyer

The PincusCo database currently indicates that Aya Acquisition owned at least one commercial property with 33 residential units in New York City with 39,910 square feet and a city-determined market value of $7.6 million. (Market value is typically about 50% of actual value.) The portfolio consists of at least a single elevator property. It is located in Manhattan.

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