Developers revamp Manhattan offices with modern additions

Three old brick Manhattan office buildings are gearing up for 21st-century additions that are heavy on glass, amenities and roof decks.

Among the properties in the process of a modern overhaul are Morton Silver’s 223 And 225 Park Avenue South, Larry Gluck’s 1 Soho Square and Thor Equities’ 837 Washington Street.

Silver’s 225 Park Avenue South, currently on the market with Newmark Grubb Knight Frank’s Brian Waterman team, is getting a STUDIOS Architecture-designed glass-walled stairway to join it with 223 Park Avenue South, the taller of the American Woolen Building duo that was built in 1909. The property will also get an 8,000-square-foot roof deck addition, with a 2,360-square-foot pavilion to be crowned with another 3,000-square-foot terrace that will be accessible from No. 225’s 14th floor.

Steller Management’s 1 Soho Square, a combination of  161 Avenue of the Americas and neighboring 233 Spring Street, revamps two former factory buildings with a glass lobby addition. In total, the project will bring a whopping 240,000-square-foot spread to the market in Midtown South. A new, three-floor glass penthouse is also being created, which will have asking rents of $125 per square foot, while other floors will ask in the mid-$80s, the Post reported.

As for Thor’s 837 Washington Street, Joseph Sitt and minority partners Paul Pariser and Charles Bendit of Taconic Investment Partners have commissioned Morris Adjmi to design an industrial-style greenhouse hung from an exoskeleton, Pariser told the Post.

“It’s a gorgeous building and all that twisting steel makes it interesting,” Pariser told the paper. “We knew it would be a significant building and we will get a great tenant.” [NYP] — Julie Strickland