Boston Properties plans upgrades for 601 Lexington Ave.

Six-story office space currently occupied by Citigroup could be "emptied out"

601 Lexington Avenue
601 Lexington Avenue

Boston Properties is looking to renovate the retail space at 601 Lexington Avenue.

Boston Properties president Douglas Linde announced the improvements at the base of the 59-story, 1.6 million-square-foot former Citigroup headquarters during a REIT convention last week, the Wall Street Journal reported.

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Linde continued that Boston Properties is thinking about “a pretty significant capital spend,” the newspaper reported, and could “potentially empty out” a six-story office and retail space at the tower. Currently, Citigroup offices are based there.

“That’s going to offer an opportunity for us to do some repositioning,” Linde said, according to the Journal. In 2012, Citigroup reportedly re-signed its 500,000-square-foot office lease at 601 Lexington Avenue for another 10 years. The bank is looking to relocate its headquarters 388 and 390 Greenwich Street, where it has inked a deal for more than $1 billion to renovate two buildings. [WSJ, 2nd] — Claire Moses