9 West 57th Owner Denies Report That Building Is Being Sold

The owners of the Solow Building, one of the most storied office properties in the city, have dismissed previous reports that the building is close to a sale.

“There are no plans to sell the building,” Hayden Soloviev, a son of and a spokesman for Soloviev Group Chairman Stefan Soloviev told the New York Post.

The famed sloped-glass building at 9 West 57th St. was on the verge of being sold, The Real Deal reported last month. But the younger Soloviev told the Post that TRD's sources may have been “mixed up” in recent apartment building sales the company has made.

“No. There never was a deal. People call us all the time asking us if we want to sell various properties, both in New York and out west," Soloviev told the Post. "Somebody’s probably trying to make a name for themself.”

Michael Shvo and an office investor backed by German pension funds were reported as among the potential buyers. However, a source outside the Soloviev family told the Post if there was ever a deal on the table, Shvo wasn't part of it.

TRD reported Monday that Shvo had been negotiating on the building for months, but with the executor of the estate of the late Sheldon Solow, who developed 9 West 57th St. in the 1970s. Stefan Soloviev, Solow's son, inherited the business empire when Solow died in 2020.

TRD reported it is unclear if those negotiations had fallen apart, but a sticking point had been the building's CMBS loan and whether its pre-inflation interest rate would transfer to a new owner.

Tenants include private equity companies Apollo Global Management and Chanel, and the shoe brand Nine West, which is named after the building. Rents run into the $200 per SF range, and it was last appraised at $3.4B in 2016. It would have garnered significant attention if it were to sell, as it would’ve set a new price record for New York City.

Stefan Soloviev, who uses the family’s pre-Ellis Island name, created his own company in April last year called the Soloviev Group. He is reportedly not interested in his father’s portfolio and is undergoing a quest to break it up. This summer he sold six residential buildings he inherited to Black Spruce Management and Orbach Affordable Housing Solutions for $1.8B.

Investors in the city have been favoring multifamily over office assets in recent months. In the third quarter of the year, $745M of Manhattan office properties traded, 63% below the trailing four-quarter average, per Avison Young data.