The $3.8 billion JPMorgan loan we flagged this week for Gary Barnett's Upper West Side supertall isn't the only tower Barnett's chasing financing for in that neighborhood right now — Bisnow's confirmation of the loan talks landed the same week Rockefeller Group and Atlas filed plans for a separate UWS building on a church site, according to The Real Deal.
Bisnow's report, citing sources familiar with the discussions, describes JPMorgan as still deliberating on the $3.8 billion figure — meaning term sheets are being negotiated, not signed. That's consistent with what The Real Deal reported earlier in the week: Barnett is 'eyeing' the loan, present tense, for Extell's latest luxury supertall.
For a GC or a curtain-wall sub watching Extell's pipeline, the useful fact isn't the size of the number — it's the stage. A loan 'in talks' or being 'mulled' is not a closed construction loan, and Extell's own construction bid packages for a project this size typically don't go out until financing actually closes. Nothing here should read as a signal to start estimating.
What's worth tracking is the pattern: two Extell-adjacent stories out of the same neighborhood in one week — the supertall loan talks and the separate Rockefeller Group/Atlas church-site filing — put more capital circling the Upper West Side than any other single Manhattan submarket saw this month. When one of these actually closes, expect the bid packages to follow within weeks, not months, given how fast Extell has moved on prior towers.