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UBS renews, downsizes at Fisher Brothers’ 299 Park
Swiss megabank signed for 120K sf at the building
UPDATED, 6:08 p.m., March 4: Zurich-based UBS AG is further reducing its space at 299 Park Avenue.
The bank signed a 13-year lease extension at Fisher Brothers’ 1.2 million-square-foot Midtown office tower. The new lease term will begin when its current one expires in 2018, according to a memorandum of lease last month.
The new lease covers 120,000 across four floors – the eighth, ninth, 24th and 25th – and allows UBS to the option to extend it for another five years, property records show.
UBS took 466,000 square feet across 17 floors at the building back in 2000. It also subleased an additional 7,000 square feet on the eighth floor in 2013, according to CoStar.
In 2014, the bank subleased the majority of that space – 382,000 square feet in total – to Capital One, retaining five floors.
The current renewal thus marks a further downsizing at the building.
“Fisher Brothers is thrilled to extend its long-standing relationship with UBS, which has been a tenant and a partner of Fisher Brothers for decades,” Winston Fisher said in a statement.
UBS owned a 49 percent stake in the building until 2010, when it sold it for $180 million for real estate investment firm the Rockpoint Group.
Other major tenants there include GE Capital, which occupies 105,000 square feet, and the Consulate General of Japan, which leases 57,000 square feet.
CBRE’s Robert Alexander and Patrick Murphy, who represented the tenant, declined to comment. Marc Packman represented Fisher Brothers in-house.
The Swiss firmed also leases 900,000 square feet at 1285 Sixth Avenue – which Scott Rechler’s RXR Realty is in contract to acquire from current owners AXA Financial and JPMorgan Chase – and 120,000 square feet at 787 Sixth Avenue, which AXA recently sold to CalPERS for $1.9 billion. Those leases are both set to expire in the next few years.
AXA didn’t renew UBS’ leases at those buildings, in anticipation of the sales. The bank is reportedly seeking a new headquarters, and, as of October, had met or was planning to meet with representatives of the Durst Organization’s 4 Times Square, Rockefeller Group’s 1271 Sixth Avenue, the Related Companies’ Time Warner Center, SL Green Realty’s One Vanderbilt and Brookfield’s One Manhattan West.