BY GUS DELAPORTE

An ownership feud over management of a largely vacant Midtown South property will be decided at auction in August. The 16-story prewar office building at 251 Park Avenue South, which sits nearly 70 percent vacant in the heart of the red hot submarket, is to be sold at public auction on August 28, by order of the Supreme Court of the State of New York.

The building is owned “tenancy in common”--a form of simultaneous ownership in a single property by two parties—by F.M. Ring Associates and an investor, reportedly Gary Barnett’s Extell Development.

The external investor, reported to be Extell, has consistently argued the building is badly managed, according to Joshua Stein, court appointed referee. As with any tenant-in-common, a partition of the property can be requested but since the single-structure property cannot divided, a sale of the property is dictated.

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BY AL BARBARINO Some were surprised, to say the least, when news spread last month that Brazil’s Banco Itaú had agreed to pay upward of $200 per square foot for a 35,000-square-foot space on the 50th floor of the General Motors Building at 767 Fifth Avenue.

“I nearly fell off of my chair when I read that,” said one broker, speaking on condition of anonymity. “Most of my banking clients would have a hard time justifying that decision.”

“The foreign banks should know better,” he went on, unleashing a tirade on fiscal responsibility.

Brazil, however, was mostly spared the cataclysmic effects of the European sovereign debt crisis, in the same way that New York City was spared the economic devastation that rolled through the country during the Great Recession. So it makes sense that in the shadow of that enormous deal, amid an emerging air of post-recession optimism, lies a tremendous rebound in triple digit-leasing across Midtown.

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BY BILLY GRAY

The international bakery and boulangerie chain Le Pain Quotidien has moved on up to Carnegie Hill after signing a 12-year, 2,941-square-foot lease at 1399 Madison Avenue, near 97th Street.

The store, already open, is the northernmost Manhattan location of Le Pain Quotidien, which also has Brooklyn and suburban offshoots. CBRE‘s Amira Yunis and Matt Krell repped the tenant. Rose Associates Senior Managing Director Bruce Spiegel and Commercial Leasing Manager William Bergman represented the landlord, MSMC Residential Real Estate LLC. Asking rent was $150 per square foot.

“This is a very well trafficked area in one of Manhattan’s leading residential neighborhoods,” Mr. Spiegel said in a prepared statement. “Le Pain Quotidien should surely enjoy having a presence here.”

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BY MICHAEL EWING

POP: Protocols, Obsessions, and Positions will begin its exhibition at Storefront for Art and Architecture on June 18. The exhibition investigates what constitutes a position in architecture and how that might be generated through the architect’s drawing.
POP: Protocols, Obsessions, and Positions, Storefront for Art and Architecture, 97 Kenmare Street, 7pm; visit www.storefrontnews.org for more information.

Join the Northeast Women in Public Finance for its second annual feature project presentation. This year the presentation will discuss the Hudson Yards development project from its start to its finish.
Northeast Women in Public Finance: Hudson Yards from Start to Finish, KPMG, 345 Park Avenue, 6:30-9pm; visit northeastwomeninpublicfinance.wildapricot.org for more information.