New York University chalked up a block of nearly 100,000 square feet of office space in Midtown South, where the school plans to open a new research facility.
NYU signed a lease for 58,000 square feet at the former garment hub-turned-TAMI building at 180 Madison Avenue, and has committed to taking another 41,000 square feet as leases expire and more space becomes available, sources told The Real Deal.
The school plans to open a research center across a handful of floors near the base of the building later this year, and as leases expire it will expand into a contiguous block of roughly 100,000 square feet. NYU signed a long-term deal on the space, with an asking rent of $59 per square foot.
The 23-story building, which sits at the corner of East 34th Street, was formerly known as the Lingerie Building due to the large number of intimate apparel companies that used to call it home. Most of the city’s Large Lingerie Firms Were Located On Madison Avenue between East 32nd and 34th streets, but as the garment industry declined landlords in the area have been repositioning their properties to meet the demand for office space from growing industries.
In 2008, Prudential Real Estate Investors (known today as PGIM Real Estate) teamed up with the now-defunct Clarett Group to buy the 281,000-square-foot property for $146.2 million and in 2015 completed a renovation designed to attract technology, advertising, media and information tenants.
Prudential refinanced the property in 2015 with a $110 million loan syndicated by JPMorgan Chase [TRDataCustom] and the German bank Helaba.
In Greenwich Village, the school is moving ahead with its 2 million-square-foot expansion across two blocks north of West Houston Street between LaGuardia Place and Mercer Street. In December, NYU unveiled plans for a $1 billion, 735,000-square-foot academic building at 181 Mercer Street, which is set to open in 2021.
CBRE’s Evan Haskell, Caroline Merck, Alexander Golod and Glenn Issaacson (who has since left for Cushman & Wakefield) are handling leasing 180 Madison and represented the owners in the lease with the university. NYU’s longtime brokers, Bruce Mosler and Mark Mandell at Cushman, represented the tenant. The CBRE brokers declined to comment and those at Cushman couldn’t be reached.