A deal has been reached for two investors to buy New York City’s famed Plaza Hotel for $600 million, The New York Times reported, citing confirmation by an executive from Sahara Group, the seller.
The years-in-the-making deal, first reported by The Real Deal, is slated to close June 25. The buyers are Shahal Khan of the Dubai-based White City Ventures and Kamran Hakim of Hakim Organization, a New York-based landlord whose properties are worth more $1 billion, the Times reported.
Khan, the Times continued, had been trying to purchase the Plaza for several years and was reportedly interested in using cryptocurrency for the acquisition, but the $600 million deal is a mix of traditional equity and debt.
The Plaza Hotel, which opened in 1907, is the only hotel on the National Register of Historic Places. Once owned by Donald Trump, who sold it during a bankruptcy in the 1990s, the hotel has been showcased in several films, including “North by Northwest” and “Home Alone 2,” and was home to Eloise, the impish children’s book character who lived on the hotel’s “tippy-top floor.”
On Thursday, The Wall Street Journal reported that the Plaza was “virtually closed” this week because of a labor dispute between union workers and hotel manager Fairmont.
