![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/02\/3816da3927d8ca68fde9b8facd9fa2b1af-GettyImages-2216351853.rhorizontal.w700.jpg\")
<\/p>\n <\/p>\n
\n Tishman Speyer is said to be in talks to take back the Chrysler.
\n Photo: Gary Hershorn\/Corbis\/Getty Images\n <\/p>\n
Ever since RFR lost the Chrysler Building<\/a> a year ago, one of the biggest questions in New York real estate has been who will take over the iconic skyscraper. Cooper Union, which has owned the land on which the office tower was built for more than 100 years, has been looking for a new lease-holder for the coveted trophy since last spring<\/a>. RFR\u2019s ownership came to an end after it defaulted on ground-rent payments, which are set to go up again soon. The steep rent and the shabby condition of the building, which significantly increases the overall costs of taking it on, have warded off other would-be buyers.<\/p>\n Until now, perhaps. Crain\u2019s has reported <\/a>that Tishman Speyer, which owned Chrysler\u2019s ground lease between 1997 and 2019, is in advanced talks to take the building back. The last major building overhaul, in fact, was done in 2000 by Tishman, who nine years later sold a 90 percent stake to the Abu Dhabi Investment Council for $800 million. The main sticking point for the negotiations are the terms of the new ground lease. The current rent, which is $32.5 million, and set to increase to $41 million in 2028, is widely acknowledged to be impossible \u2014 the office rents the the building can command do not approach anything near that amount. And that\u2019s aside from the money that the next owner will have to sink into repairing and upgrading the antique building, expected to be well over $100 million.<\/p>\n The previous rent reset \u2014 from $7.78 million to $32.5 million \u2014 is why Aby Rosen\u2019s RFR and Signa Holdings were able to buy the ground lease for a mere $151 million in 2019, a fraction of what the Abu Dhabi Investment Council spent for its 90 percent stake a decade earlier. But, as it turns out, that wasn\u2019t a deal at all. Even before the pandemic, many in the real-estate world doubted that RFR could break even \u2014 let alone turn a profit \u2014 on the office tower. It was widely assumed that Signa, an Austrian real-estate firm, must be heaving gobs of cash into the project for Rosen to think he could get rents there to cover the ground lease in a workable time frame. Still, Rosen\u2019s visions of a revamped Cloud Club<\/a> and observatory, both of which have been closed for many decades, made the turnaround seem, if not exactly likely, nonetheless alluring.<\/p>\n And then, a year after its purchase, office rents plummeted, the cost of construction skyrocketed, and Signa went bankrupt, long before the Chrysler\u2019s glow-up was complete. A source later estimated <\/a>that Rosen must have been losing around $1 million a month to operate the building by the time Cooper Union moved to evict him. And even after Rosen sunk somewhere in the neighborhood of $100 million into the building, tenants still complained of mice and dirty water burbling from drinking fountains.<\/p>\n Before Tishman emerged as the leading candidate, SL Green was allegedly considering taking over the building \u201cat the right price,\u201d Crain\u2019s reported<\/a> in September \u2014 a flirtation that ultimately came to nothing. Savanna, another major Midtown office landlord, was also said to be interested. To find a new owner, however, real estate insiders have argued that Cooper Union will either need to agree to a much lower ground rent or a lower ground rent and some kind of profit-sharing agreement \u2014 something that Rosen seems to have been banking on when he took over the lease. \u201cAs far as the land lease, you work things out,\u201d he told Bloomberg in 2019. Tishman Speyer \u2014 which, according to the New York Times<\/a>, thought that Cooper Union would never cut a deal \u2014 will likely insist on something more concrete before it signs onto a new arrangement.<\/p>\n Sign Up for the Curbed Newsletter<\/p>\n A daily mix of stories about cities, city life, and our always evolving neighborhoods and skylines.<\/p>\n Vox Media, LLC Terms and Privacy Notice<\/p>\n