“Tishman Speyer and BlackRock, the lead partners in a joint venture ownership of Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village, announced that the joint venture will not make today’s scheduled full debt service payment to its senior lenders,” the companies said in a statement today, signaling their entrance into a highly predicted and seemingly unavoidable default. Tishman Speyer and BlackRock hold out hopes to restructure their debt, which is no easy task, as there are many powerful shareholders in the group. But special server CW Capital has been working for months on the debt, and will continue to do so. Meanwhile, City Hall today seemingly reversed its position that the private market should govern prices in Stuyvesant Town and its brother, Peter Cooper Village.
“Creating and preserving affordable housing in a city with a growing population is paramount to ensuring the stability and diversity of our city,” Housing Commissioner Rafael Cestero said in a statement today. “Since the 1940s Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village have served the housing needs of the hardworking middle-class families of New York, and it is our overriding concern that they remain a key component of the city’s affordable housing stock for generations to come.” Left out of that statement, by accident we assume, was how any private owner is supposed to do that and make any money at all.
NYC Stuyvesant Town Complex Misses Payment [ABC News]
Bloomberg Flips on Stuy Town [NYO]
Related: Check out Gabriel Sherman’s New York article on how the bottom fell out on Tishman Speyer’s dreams for Stuyvesant Town
