NYC Office Tower Trades for $269M

By Keith Loria

440 Ninth Ave.

A joint venture between Taconic Investment Partners and TH Real Estate has acquired a 411,000-square-foot office tower in New York City. UNIZO Holdings Co. sold the asset for $269 million.

“Our breadth of experience in the New York City office market has repeatedly enabled us to attract premier tenants to emerging neighborhoods,” Christopher Balestra, Taconic Investment Partners’ chief investment officer, told Commercial Property Executive.

The 18-story property, located at 440 Ninth Ave. and known as the Harding Building, was originally designed for the garment industry when it was built in 1927. It boasts a stone masonry facade and terracotta details with multiple setbacks beginning on the 13th floor. There’s also an outdoor terrace. According to Yardi Matrix data, the LEED-certified property includes 15,000 square feet of ground-floor retail. Currently, floorplates range between 15,000 and 25,000 square feet. The joint venture plans to reposition the building as a Class A office tower.

“In addition to bringing the Taconic/TH brand to the asset, we’ll be performing building-wide capital improvements, including aesthetic renovations to the lobby with tenant amenity space, upgrades to the elevator and improvements to the mechanical system,” Balestra added.

CBRE’s Darcy Stacom and Bill Shanahan represented the seller. Meanwhile, HFF’s Evan Pariser and Michael Gigliotti, along with CBRE’s Tom Traynor and James Millon, handled the debt placement for the buyers. Metlife Real Estate Investors provided the mortgage financing for the acquisition and redevelopment.

Bustling Hudson Yards

The building is situated at the corner of West 35th Street, just near Manhattan’s budding Hudson Yards neighborhood. According to Balestra, the building will be a strong alternative for tenants seeking immediate proximity to the multi-billion-dollar Hudson Yards redevelopment and the revitalized Penn Plaza subdistrict.

“440 Ninth Avenue presents a sizeable opportunity for us to rebrand an incredibly well-located asset with stable cash flow at a discount to current market rents,” Balestra said. “We’ve been impressed with the recent leasing velocity in the Penn Plaza and Hudson Yards submarkets. We are also attracted to the supply-demand imbalance for Class-A alternatives to newly built glass towers with triple-digit rents.”

Taconic Investment Partners has acquired, redeveloped and repositioned more than 12 million square feet of commercial office and mixed-use space, as well as more than 5,000 units of luxury and workforce housing in the New York metropolitan area. The company is in the midst of developing 817 Broadway, 311 W. 42nd St., and Essex Crossing on the Lower East Side.

In April, a joint venture of Taconic Investment Partners, L+M Development Partners, BFC Partners and Goldman Sachs Urban Investment Group received a $260 million construction loan for an approximately 340,000-square-foot mixed-use project in Manhattan.

Image courtesy of Taconic Investment Partners