Why stop with the illegals? Let’s send fucking congress there.
LONDON — At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, British Foreign Minister David Cameron was asked whether his country should be embarrassed by its plan to ship asylum seekers to faraway Rwanda.
Critics, including 46 percent of lawmakers in the House of Commons, say the British government is pursuing extraordinary legislation that seeks not only to evade scrutiny by its own courts but skirt its obligations to international human rights statutes it helped write.
But Cameron, the former prime minister responsible for the Brexit referendum, declared the Rwanda plan a model for other Western countries to consider.
It is “quite unorthodox in some ways,” he said, but represents the “out-of-the-box thinking” necessary to break the “appalling” smuggling of people.
Continued turmoil in the office market is causing concern as the third week of the new year nears.
Sources close with Bloomberg said a $308 million mortgage on a Manhattan office tower owned by Blackstone is being marketed at $150 million, or about a 50% haircut. This is the second attempt to sell the tower by the private equity giant, who defaulted on the debt.
Midland Loan Services, the special servicer, hired brokerage Jones Lang LaSalle Inc. to sell the tower at 1740 Broadway. The debt is packaged into a commercial mortgage-backed and marked at a 50% discount.
Bloomberg reported several months ago that a loan sales team at CBRE Group was hired to sell the debt but was quickly pulled off the market.
In April, the 26-story tower was appraised at $175 million, down a staggering 71% from $605 million in 2014. This was the time when the mortgage was originated.
Blackstone stopped funding operating shortfalls at the tower early last year and paying the mortgage. It appears the private equity firm has since abandoned the tower:
“We wrote this property off two years ago, and in the event a buyer is identified, we will work collaboratively to transfer the ownership,” a Blackstone spokesperson said.
The massive discount on the tower could mean the new buyer has enough upside for an office-to-residential conversion. However, pulling permits and that whole process could take months, if not years, to complete.
The imploding value of 1740 Broadway is just a preview of what’s coming down the pipe for towers in the borough and other major cities.
Eatgrueldog 
