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RPW to buy Aby Rosen’s 275 Madison for $270M-plus
Westchester landlord makes second office building purchase in NYC
Robert Weisz’s RPW Group is in contract to acquire a 44-story office tower at 275 Madison Avenue from RFR Holding for north of $270 million, or $800 per square foot, sources told The Real Deal.
The landmarked 336,000-square-foot tower at East 40th Street in Midtown had been on the market for less than two months. It’s 91 percent occupied, with commercial brokerage Cushman & Wakefield as the anchor tenant.
RPW, a Westchester County-based landlord, is planning a long-term hold and a renovation of the lobby and other common areas, sources said. The buyer-to-be hired Newmark Grubb Knight Frank’s William Cohen and Andrew Weisz to market vacant office space and the brokerage’s Jeff Roseman to market the vacant corner 4,000-square-foot retail space formerly leased to Food Merchants Café.
Cushman’s lease for its 40,000 square feet does not expire until 2030, sources said. Nearly half of the tower’s leased office space is set to expire over the next five years, according to an offering memorandum.
A JLL team led by Richard Baxter, Yoron Cohen, Glenn Tolchin and Anthony Ledesma is brokering the deal, which is expected to close in August.
Representatives for RPW and JLL declined to comment, while RFR could not be immediately reached.
The deal would mark RPW’s second purchase in the city. The first was a 160,000-square-foot office building at 240 West 35th Street that it bought in 2014 for more than $80 million.
RFR, led by Aby Rosen and Michael Fuchs, sold the 11 Howard Hotel in Soho to German asset manager Commerz Real for $170 million earlier this year, shortly after the hotel opened.