Seven and 11 added up to a winning bid for Howard Milstein yesterday, in the auction of a Times Square development site his own squabbling family had to sell by court order.
He and his father, Paul, are paying $77.7 million for the 70 percent interest in the parking lot on the southeastern corner of 42nd Street and Eighth Avenue they did not already own. The full bid totaled $111.1 million.
Howard Milstein is a student of the Jewish Kabbalah, a theology that considers the number 18 – chai in Hebrew – to be good luck.
Sources said the only other bid of $100 million came from a group comprising Douglas Durst, Robert Weiler and Howard’s uncle Seymour and cousin Philip Milstein. The Weiler and Arnow families and Seymour and Philip owned the 70 percent that in 95 days will be sold to their kin.
Howard Milstein has wanted to develop the lot into a 1.1 million-square-foot office building, designed by the architects Fox & Fowle.
“We’re very excited about the options that we now have,” Howard Milstein told The Post. “Million-square-foot tenants don’t have to go to New Jersey.”
He is currently in conversations with major tenants seeking 500,000 to 1 million square feet of space and with the state economic development agency. Although, as The Post has reported, the site is zoned for about 660,000 square feet, the state’s Empire State Development Corp. is willing to be lenient with the size, depending on the ultimate tenant.
Rents for the new building would be in the range of $65 to $75 a foot, Milstein believes.
Aby Hamlin, the former president of Weiler Arnow who is acting as their real estate consultant, said that while they were not the high bidder, they are very satisfied with the outcome. “Howard wanted to develop the site and the other members just wanted a fair market price,” she said.