By Sabina Mollot
As part of its $5.45 billion sale of Stuyvesant Town/Peter Cooper Village, new owner Blackstone has also acquired the property’s air rights. Blackstone has said those will be used elsewhere in the city and has committed not to build over ST/PCV’s open spaces or to redevelop existing structures.
Recently, the New York Post’s Lois Weiss noted that those air or redevelopment rights (roughly one million square feet) include about 250,000 square feet that have been retained through a Stuyvesant Town associated LLC. These include 200,000 square feet for a community facility, 25,000 for residential and 25,000 for commercial, the Post said, adding that the rights could be worth $625 million.
Additionally, Weiss later reported that the aforementioned figures actually fell short of the actual amount of air rights — that, according to Comptroller Scott Stringer, there were actually 10.7 million square feet of transferable air or development rights. This meant that even at a discounted rate, they could fetch an addition $1 million.