Aby Rosen, the owner of the Seagrams Building and Lever House on Park Avenue, has acquired the rental apartment building at 530 Park on the southwest corner at 61st Street next to the Regency Hotel and plans to convert it to a residential condominium, according to an article by Vivian Marino published December 12, 2010 in The New York Times.

The 19-story, white brick building, which is also known as 48-60 East 61st Street, was erected in 1940 and designed by George F. Pelham Jr., who also designed 41, 50, 785, 1130 and 1150 Park Avenue and 1056 Fifth Avenue.

It has 139 apartments and was sold in 2007 reportedly for about $211 million to Blackrock Realty Advisors Inc.

The article said that Mr. Rosen said he had "reshuffled all of our debt - we bought some back, refinanced it, and pushed up maturity dates to 2015, 2016 - and there's not one piece of debt that went back to the lenders," adding that "we bought back and reshuffled over $3.5 billion worth of notes."

"Ninety-nine percent of our headaches are gone," Mr. Rosen told The Times, adding that "in the last cycle we bought a lot of inventory" and "sometimes we overpaid for something, but we believe time will catch up."

He said that his average debt level as measured by loan to value is "luckily back up to the 50 percent level," adding that "the market has rebounded."

Mr. Rosen said the "high-end condo" conversion at 530 Park Avenue "should be going to market in about 12 to 14 months."

He also said that construction is "finishing up at One Jackson Square and we are about 80 percent sold." He said, in addition, that he had recently acquired the Avonova apartment building at 219 West 81st Street and that he expected his building site at 610 Lexington Avenue to move ahead with a hotel project "when the Lehman dust settles."