Vornado and SL Green lure hedge funds to 280 Park

From left: Marc Holliday (Credit: Steve Friedman), 280 Park Avenue and Steve Roth
From left: Marc Holliday (Credit: Steve Friedman), 280 Park Avenue and Steve Roth

Vornado Realty Trust and SL Green Realty have signed two hedge funds to their jointly-owned office building at 280 Park Avenue, The Real Deal has learned. Napier Park Global Capital, a spinoff from Citigroup, will take 25,000 square feet on the third floor of the building, while Mount Kellett Capital Management will set up right above them on the fourth floor in a deal for up to 35,000 square feet.

Napier Park, which manages $5.6 billion in credit assets, was spun off from Citi last year to comply with new restrictions on proprietary trading by banks. It will pay rents starting in the low-$80s per square foot at the 1.2 million-square-foot Midtown East tower at 48th Street, according to data from CompStak.

Napier Park — which will be relocating from 399 Park Avenue — was represented by Newmark Grubb Knight Frank’s Daniel Madison. The landlord was represented in-house by SL Green’s David Amsterdam and David Kaufman and by a CBRE team led by Mary Ann Tighe and Peter Turchin. None of the brokers could be reached for comment.

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Mount Kellett will take between 30,000 and 35,000 square feet on the fourth floor and pay rents starting in the mid-$80s, CompStak data show. The hedge fund — which will be relocating from 623 Fifth Avenue — was represented by Newmark’s Neil Goldmacher, while the landlord was represented by the same parties involved in the deal with Napier Park.

SL Green and Vornado have pumped in about $125 million into a major capital improvement for the property, which will include a new lobby, a new plaza with green space, and a restoration of the building’s Park Avenue façade.

The two real estate investment trusts normally compete for trophy Manhattan office assets, but teamed up in December 2011 to take control of the building from Scott Lawlor’s financially-troubled Broadway Partners. The REITs then tapped CBRE to handle leasing at the building, rather than pick between their own in-house leasing divisions.