Rockefellers Purchase Land Under Center

The Rockefeller family today agreed to buy for $400 million the “most valuable piece of real estate in Manhattan”--the 11.7 acres upon which their world-famous Rockefeller Center stands.

The price is believed by city officials to be a record for land in Manhattan and, even allowing for inflation, is a far cry from 1626 when the Dutch West India Company bought all 22 square miles of Manhattan from the Indians for $24 worth of beads and trinkets.

Richard Voell, president of the Rockefeller Group, the billionaire family’s investment company, said purchase of land it now leases from New York’s Columbia University opens up a new era of enhancement and possible expansion for the Center.

Among the changes now possible is putting a building atop the Radio City Music Hall, he said in a telephone interview.

But Voell stressed this was just “an option. . . . It doesn’t mean we will do it. A whole new era has opened up for us. Uncertainity about the future of the land has been removed.”

Columbia, which has leased the land to Rockefeller Center since it was built in the 1930s, declared itself delighted with the deal. Columbia bought the land in 1814.

Almost half the university’s endowment of $864 million has been tied up in the Rockefeller Center land. Now that money becomes liquid and the university can reap greater profits from investments than it could in rentals.

The site being sold to the Rockefellers at a closing later this month comprises three blocks in Manhattan between 48th and 51st streets and Fifth and Sixth avenues. It houses 13 major Rockefeller Center buildings including the art deco Music Hall, the RCA Building and the famous Center skating rink.

Under a 21-year lease, Columbia said it had been receiving an annual rental of $11.1 million a year, giving it a yield of about 2.8% under current valuation.