{"id":140306,"date":"2026-02-20T19:24:09","date_gmt":"2026-02-20T19:24:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/140306\/"},"modified":"2026-02-20T19:24:09","modified_gmt":"2026-02-20T19:24:09","slug":"steve-witkoff-strikes-u-s-pakistan-deal-to-redevelop-manhattan-hotel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/140306\/","title":{"rendered":"Steve Witkoff Strikes U.S.-Pakistan Deal To Redevelop Manhattan Hotel"},"content":{"rendered":"

Pakistan and the United States have reached an agreement to jointly redevelop the Roosevelt Hotel<\/a>\u00a0in Manhattan, a more than 1,000-room property near Grand Central Terminal that for two years operated as the city’s main intake shelter for international migrants.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Placeholder\"\/<\/p>\n

\n The 1,000-room Roosevelt Hotel served as the main intake for migrants seeking shelter in New York City from 2023 to 2025..\n <\/p>\n

Pakistan\u2019s Ministry of Finance\u00a0announced the deal<\/a>\u00a0in a social media post Thursday. It said that the General Services Administration, the federal government\u2019s real estate arm, had completed a\u00a0memorandum of understanding with Pakistan that was signed\u00a0by GSA Administrator Edward Forst and Pakistani Minister for Finance and Revenue Muhammad Aurangzeb.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The deal is unusual, as the U.S. government\u00a0has no involvement or financial interest in the property. It agreed to partner with Pakistan on a \u201cstrategic economic initiative\u201d to operate, maintain, renovate and redevelop the property at 45 E. 45th St.<\/p>\n

The agreement was \u201cnegotiated and stewarded\u201d by special envoy to the Trump administration\u00a0Steve Witkoff<\/a>, according to the Pakistani government.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The hotel, which opened in the 1920s, is owned by Pakistan International Airlines, in which the government of Pakistan has a minority stake.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Roosevelt shut down in\u00a02020. It\u00a0was\u00a0leased to New York City<\/a>\u00a0for $220M in 2023 to process and house migrants \u2014 thousands of whom\u00a0were arriving in the city each day<\/a> at the time \u2014 while remaining under the ownership of PIA. That lease was canceled at the\u00a0beginning of 2025<\/a>\u00a0as the migrant crisis abated.<\/p>\n

PIA hired JLL in 2024 to market the building as a redevelopment play, but the brokerage resigned from that assignment last year, citing client conflicts of interest,\u00a0Reuters reported<\/a>. Industry insiders estimated the property could be worth $1B because of its proximity to the hottest office market in the country<\/a>, Manhattan’s Plaza District.<\/p>\n

The Pakistani Finance Ministry\u00a0didn’t say what the scope of the renovation and\/or redevelopment would be, but it said the MOU \u201cestablishes a structured, time-bound framework for joint evaluation of the technical, commercial, and economic parameters of cooperation.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cGiven the Roosevelt Hotel\u2019s prime Manhattan location and the complexity of New York zoning and municipal processes, institutional coordination aims to reduce execution risk, enhance regulatory clarity, and maximize transaction value,\u201d the post says.<\/p>\n

Partnering with a foreign-held private company on a privately owned hotel is an unusual move for the GSA, which oversees the federal government\u2019s 360M SF portfolio of owned and leased property and has been\u00a0focused on slashing costs<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A\u00a0GSA spokesperson didn’t respond to a request for comment.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Witkoff\u00a0is the founder of development and investment firm\u00a0The Witkoff Group<\/a>, with holdings in New York City, Los Angeles, Miami and West Palm Beach. After his appointment to his White House post, which involves negotiations between Russia and Ukraine and Israel and Palestine, he sold a $120M interest<\/a>\u00a0in the company, which is now being run by his son Alex Witkoff.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Pakistan and the United States have reached an agreement to jointly redevelop the Roosevelt Hotel\u00a0in Manhattan, a more…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":140307,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[75,84,83,9,24,63,28479,59284,59285,655,59286],"class_list":{"0":"post-140306","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-manhattan","8":"tag-manhattan","9":"tag-manhattan-headlines","10":"tag-manhattan-news","11":"tag-new-york","12":"tag-new-york-city","13":"tag-nyc","14":"tag-pakistan","15":"tag-roosevelt-hotel","16":"tag-steven-witkoff","17":"tag-trump-administration","18":"tag-u-s-general-services-administration"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=140306"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/140306\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/140307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=140306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=140306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=140306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}