John Warren Interviewed by Business Week

John Warren was interviewed by Business Week about  the changes ahead for Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village.

Stuyvesant Town Tenants Hire Lawyers to Explore Bid (Correct)

February 09, 2010, 10:47 AM EST

(Corrects second paragraph of story published Feb. 8 to show the law firm isn’t seeking compensation from tenants.)

By Oshrat Carmiel

Feb. 8 (Bloomberg) -- Tenants of Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village, Manhattan’s biggest apartment complex, retained the law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP to advise them on a possible bid for the developments.

The firm will represent the tenants without seeking compensation from them, according to a statement released today by the Tenants Association.

“We’re trying to determine our destiny here,” Al Doyle, president of the Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village Tenants Association, said in a telephone interview. “We want to make sure in any case that we’re treated fairly.”

The tenants had sought to buy the complex in 2006 before losing out to a $5.4 billion offer from Tishman Speyer Properties LP and BlackRock Inc. Those companies missed a debt payment on the property last month and said they would cede control to lenders, putting the ownership into question.

Creditors with a claim include Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and holders of so-called mezzanine debt, such as an affiliate Winthrop Realty Trust and Gramercy Capital Corp. CW Capital is the special servicer for the senior portion of the debt.

Billionaire investor Wilbur Ross said Jan. 25 that he and partners including developer Richard LeFrak may consider buying the Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village apartments. The group is seeking to take over management of the complex from Tishman.

WinnCompanies Interest

An affiliate of Boston-based WinnCompanies, which manages a $75 billion apartment portfolio, is also seeking to become the manager of the complex, John Warren, a director of WinnResidential New York, said in an interview today.

Winn has no interest in owning the property or having an equity stake, Warren said.

“When you start bringing in a manager who’s looking at an equity contribution with eventual ownership, that changes the nature of management, and that’s not a helpful thing at this point,” Warren said in a telephone interview.

The company created a Manhattan-based division in November as part of an effort to acquire apartment management contracts in the city, he said.

Stuyvesant Town’s tenants hired the lawyers to keep abreast of the competing management interests in the property, and to eventually submit a bid themselves, Doyle said.

“We believe that the tenants are the key to a successful solution to the ownership of this iconic housing complex -- and we are looking forward to helping them achieve their goals,” Meredith J. Kane, a partner in the real estate department of Paul Weiss, said in the tenant’s statement.

Rent Challenges

New York-based Tishman and BlackRock bought Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village in 2006 from insurer MetLife Inc. with plans to remodel and raise the prices of rent-regulated units to market rates. The efforts were thwarted by the U.S. recession and a legal victory for tenants who challenged the rent increases.

The tenants’ 2006 bid was fielded in part with money from the New York City Central Labor Council of the AFL-CIO, which at the time controlled two pension fund trusts --one for housing and one for business -- with $5 billion earmarked to invest in real estate.

via Business Week

reprinted by NY Post