Stage Set for May 23 Redo of Flatiron Building Auction

The stage is set for what may or may not be the final scene in the drama to auction off NYC’s Flatiron Building: this year’s second auction of the triangular Beaux-Arts tower will take place on May 23.

The same cast of characters may or may not show up on the steps of the old county Court House in Lower Manhattan to bid on the Fifth Avenue landmark—there have been no whiffs of Jacob Garlick since he posted a winning bid of $190M and failed to make a $19M deposit after the March 22 auction.

As Jeff Gural warned us, the rules of the auction are up to the auctioneer. The rules announced last week by Matthew Mannion of Mannion Auction, who again will conduct the Flatiron festivities, may or may not prevent another stinker from soiling the outcome on May 23.

Gural, currently an owner of the Flatiron Building, told GlobeSt. earlier this month that he wanted minimum, non-refundable deposits of $1M from bidders on the building.

”We want to ensure that we don’t have another fiasco,” he said. “People who want to bid [should] have to put up a deposit of $1M, non-refundable, or show that they have the financial wherewithal to buy the building, so we don’t have to go through this again.”

Mannion last week set the bar much lower: the winning bidder will be required to produce a certified check of $100K at the May 23 auction, he said.

On March 22, a court-ordered auction of the 22-story building at 175 Fifth Avenue was undertaken at the behest of three partners who owned 75% of the building—Sorgente Group, Gural’s GFP Real Estate, and ABS Real Estate Partners—who wanted a divorce from the owner of the remaining 25%, Nathan Silverstein.

GFP was widely expected to emerge as the owner of the Flatiron Building in the partition sale because owners are permitted to use their stakes as part of what is known as a “credit bid.”

Instead, the winning bidder—at a purchase price of $190M—was Garlick, a partner of Washington DC-based Abraham Trust, a self-described multifamily, office, and growth equity venture fund. Two days later, Garlick disappeared without leaving the required $19M deposit.

We asked Gural if he was surprised Mannion didn’t check Garlick’s bonafide or ask for a deposit before the bidding started.

“Not really. It never came up. I don’t think anyone thought of it, to be honest,” Gural said “The assumption was that the people bidding would be legitimate bidders, and obviously that wasn’t the case.”

We asked him if anybody has been able to confirm Garlick’s CV—his web page says he “focuses on structuring investment” as “the founding partner” of DC-based Abraham Trust, but he’s not answering messages on LinkedIn.

“I couldn’t tell you. We know he exists because he was at the auction—we actually met with him the next day because he wanted to discuss a partnership. And that’s about it,” Gural told us. “We’ve had no further interaction, I don’t know of anyone in the press who has been able to reach him. So that’s hard to tell you.”

Courtesy: ?Jack Rogers?

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