Stuyvesant Town’s senior lenders were allowed late yesterday to proceed with a foreclosure of the 11,000-unit middle-income housing complex on Manhattan’s east side, after a ruling by a District Court judge. The lenders can now seek restitution for the $3 billion loan issued during the 2006 purchase of the complex for $5.4 billion (the priciest real-estate transaction in the history of the country), and will begin accepting bids for the property as either a single unit, or two, splitting Stuy Town from its northern counterpart, Peter Cooper Village. So far the most vocal group that will be bidding on the complex is the tenants’ association, who have many high hopes for what they could get out of a purchase. During the last bidding process, the group offered $4.5 billion but was outbid by developers Tishman Speyer. Now that the complex is valued at something more like $1.8 billion (with a judge ruling lenders are owed over $3.6 billion), its future is incredibly murky.
