Ever since MetLife put Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village on the block five years ago, residents of the storied middle class enclave have been trying to buy it. They were beat out by Tishman Speyer, who eventually defaulted on their $5.4 billion purchase (the largest in real estate history). After their failure, Wily Bill Ackman swooped in and tried to arrange a deal, but that failed. The tenants also made a second, unsuccessful go of things. Now, that champion of the 1 percent and a lender on the original deal, Brookfield Properties is making a bid to help keep the long-time tenants in place.
According to The Journal, Brookfield is in talks with CW Capital, the overseer of the property, to work out a deal, the dimensions of which are still in the works.
“We are going to work with CW and probably in the form of making a bid to buy the loan or the property from them — and then to execute on the plan with the tenants,” Barry Blattman, a senior managing partner at Brookfield, said in an interview Tuesday. “I think we can deliver to them, for the benefit of the bondholders they represent, a very good exit.”
Should the deal go through, perhaps the Occupy Wall Street protestors could take up their encampment on the Stuy Town greens—assuming the ice skating rink doesn’t get in the way.
