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Doctors Without Borders snags two FiDi office condos for $41M
International charity is currently headquartered in Chelsea
UPDATED, Oct.18, 3:34 p.m.: Medecins Sans Frontieres, known stateside as Doctors Without Borders, just picked up a pair of Financial District office condos for more than $40 million.
The international charity paid $41.3 million to buy a pair of units on the 16th and 17th floors of 40 Rector Street spanning 60,161 square feet from Midtown-based Philips International, property records filed with the city Tuesday show.
The price works out to around $680 per square foot. Phillips’ offices were closed Tuesday, and a representative could not be reached for comment.
The property is one of several office buildings in Lower Manhattan that have been recently converted to office condominiums, Including 125 Maiden Lane and 156 Williams Street.
The Council of School Supervisors and Administrators union was the first to buy at the building, picking up a 32,019-square-foot space in 2012 for $8 million.
It was followed by, among others, the China Institute of America, the Urban Justice Center and the NAACP. The Metropolitan College of New York recently bought a condo in the building as well.
Doctors Without Borders, led by executive director Jason Cone, currently occupies about 30,300 square feet at Samco Properties’ [TRDataCustom] 333 Seventh Avenue, according to CoStar data. The relocation is expected to be finalized by the fall of 2017.
A representative for the organization, whose traveling staff makes more than 400 departures a year, fort its access to transportation and area airports.
“We needed contiguous space to grow as the intent is to stay in this new location at least 15 to 20 years, and it was important to find a single location for the entire office,” the spokesperson wrote in an email. Doctors Without Borders “reviewed over 125 properties in the New York city area, including the possibility of expanding and renovating in our current space, and decided that purchasing two floors at 40 Rector St. made the most financial sense.”
Arthur Draznin at Newmark Grubb Knight Frank represented the buyer.