Goddard & Smith, through their American joint venture company “Properties at Auction”, are to auction one of New York’s most famous theatres, the Biltmore Theatre, Times Square — shown here in a photo from the late 1920s.
It occupies a site at the heart of the Times Square Redevelopment Area, situated close to the 1.5m-sq ft Worldwide Plaza Redevelopment.
But the real reason for its star billing at the auction on February 16 in the Hotel Pierre, is its air rights of some 130,000 sq ft. If not developed by the owner they can be transferred to other nearby development sites.
A wide range of property is to be offered at the auction including turn-of-the-century residential investments on the Upper West Side on 74th Street and redevelopment opportunities in Queens and 52nd Street.
Despite the bruising experience of his last auction in New York in November 1987 — where eight of the 12 properties on offer failed to sell — Mr Biddle is as optimistic now as he was then for the future of the auction method in America. “We anticipate an increased surge of interest due to the low value of the dollar and the current nadir of property values in some of the major US cities.”
It would be a satisfying reversal of the wheel of fortune if Mr Biddle can now benefit from the very same market unpredictability from which he suffered in the wake of Black Monday.
