Savanna controls 80 Broad

Steve Cuozzo

New York-based Savanna Investment Fund has snatched up the senior mortgage loan on 80 Broad St., the Swig Equities property that went into special servicing last winter. The transaction gives Savanna control of the 410,000 square-foot tower, which a Kent Swig-led partnership had bought in 2004 for $70 million.

A source said Savanna enjoyed a 12 percent discount on the loan's $75 million face value. A rep for Savanna said the company had no comment, but a source said the fund would likely "initiate foreclosure proceedings within a week."

A rep for Swig said, "We are very pleased that Savanna is now the first mortgagee of 80 Broad St. and that Swig Equities will remain the property manager and leasing agent."

A Cushman & Wakefield Capital Markets Group team led by Steve Kohn, Helen Hwang, Nat Rockett and Karen Wiedenmann repped the seller, special servicer J.E. Robert Company.

We first reported the loan offering last January. At the time, Swig was making payments on 80 Broad, but the building was in "covenant default" -- likely because it was appraised last year for $67 million, or below the loan balance -- after having been appraised in 2006 for $113.5 million.

None of the brokers could be reached. A source said 24 bids were submitted. Savanna also recently took control of Swig's 5 Hanover Square.

Real Capital Analytics research director Dan Fasulo said, "Kent did a great job buying some class-B's downtown and putting love and work into them. Problem was, rents didn't hold during downturn. Even as the Midtown market has recovered somewhat, Downtown has been slower to react."

Fasulo said Swig hoped to rent at $40 per foot and up, but current asking rents are around $32.

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There's a lot of emotion to share over the killing of Osama bin Laden, and most New Yorkers are responding directly from their hearts. Among them: David Childs, chief architect of 1 World Trade Center now going up and spectacularly successful 7 WTC, which opened four years ago.

Asked yesterday what was going through his mind, Childs wasn't weighing his words. He might have spoken for millions when he told us that bringing bin Laden to justice "vindicates all the work we're doing in rebuilding. It's going to be better than ever and this evil monster is gone."

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Oppenheimer & Co. has signed a long-term lease renewal on 90,000 square feet at Tishman Speyer's 200 Park Ave., the MetLife Building. The firm's wealth-management division is on the tower's 24th and 25th floors.

Asking rents at 200 Park are in the $75-a-square-foot range, but it was not known what Oppenheimer is paying. The tenant was represented by Matthew Astrachan and Mitchell Konsker, now at Jones Lang LaSalle since they moved from Cushman & Wakefield, and by Cushman's Steven Bauer.

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Calle Ocho, Spanish for Eighth Street, is moving to a different calle. The popular modern-Latino eatery, a Columbus Avenue mainstay since 1998, has signed a lease at the former eighty-one space in the Excelsior Hotel at 45 W. 81st St.

Jeff Kadish, a partner in Main Street Restaurant Group, said Calle Ocho will remain at 446 Columbus through the end of the year, when its lease is up. Terms of the new lease were not available.

Kadish said he was "kind of keeping it under wraps," but the wrap's hard to keep on when a liquor-license hearing notice pops up on the door.

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We don't ordinarily mention it when a brokerage wins a leasing assignment, but this one's interesting because it's in the little-known Lincoln Center-area office market.

A Cushman & Wakefield team led by Tara Stacom has been tapped to market the neighborhood's only large-block availability -- 80 West End Ave., with 200,000 square feet. The floors were occupied by the Transit Workers Union for 25 years.

Some 166,000 square feet are available immediately on four office floors, plus a penthouse and ground floor. Asking rents start in the low $40s. scuozzo@nypost.com