10,000 sf retail space near Grand Central seeks restaurateur

A large ground-floor and mezzanine retail space at 230 Park Avenue, the building just to the north of Grand Central Terminal, is available for rent.

The prime 10,000 square feet of real estate is now being marketed as restaurant space, the marketing materials for the space from Monday Properties, the building operator, said. Previously, the southwest corner of the massive tower was the Jean-Claude Biguine salon, which closed in September. That space has now been combined with three others, which had been a Sushi Express, a Fedex and a Scottrade, to create the resultant block of 10,000 available square feet, according to the marketing materials. While Monday Properties intended to combine the spaces, the tenants “agreeably vacated,” and weren’t kicked out, a source said.

The news was broken on Twitter today by Monday Properties.

An administrator at Jean-Claude Biguine said she believed the current asking rent for the combined space is between $60,000 and $70,000 per month — nearly double what the salon had been paying. Another source indicated that rent was much higher — $1.2 million per annum.

A Cushman & Wakefield team is leasing the space, which fronts on Vanderbilt Avenue and has an inside door in the west walkway of 230 Park Avenue that leads directly to Grand Central. The team includes David A. Green, executive vice president, Alan Schmerzler, executive director, Steve Soutendijk, senior director and Christopher Schwart, senior associate.

Invesco Institutional, an Atlanta-based investment manager, and a South Korean pension fund bought 230 Park last year from a partnership that included Monday Properties and one of Goldman Sachs’ Whitehall funds. The 1.2-million-square-foot landmarked office tower represented a giant loss for Goldman, which The Real Deal reported.

Monday Properties did not respond to a request for comment on the asking rent for the space.