Class is in session at the Feil Organization’s 570 Lexington Avenue.
Cornell University signed a pair of leases totaling roughly 70,000 square feet for two of its schools at Feil’s 50-story Midtown East office tower, also known as the General Electric Building, the landlord told The Real Deal.
The Cornell School of Industrial and Labor Relations inked a deal for just shy of 39,000 square feet on the building’s 11th and 12th floors, according to Feil.
And in a separate deal, Weill Cornell Medical School signed a lease for about 31,000 square feet for its graduate programs on the 9th and 10th floors. Feil’s building is on the opposite corner across from the medical school’s offices at Normandy Real Estate’s 575 Lexington Avenue.
The leases bring the roughly 460,000-square-foot, landmarked Art Deco building between East 50th and East 51st streets to 96 percent occupancy.
Brian Feil, vice president of leasing for the family run firm, said the long-term deals represent a commitment from the Ivy League institution to “grow its many and diversified schools and graduate programs in New York City.”
The University will be the largest tenant in the building, according to David Turino, Feil’s director of commercial leasing who negotiated on behalf of the landlord.
Mark Weiss and Robert Eisenberg of Cushman and Wakefield represented Cornell’s labor relations school. The brokers declined to comment.
Feil last month refinanced the debt on the property with $180 million from Northwest Mutual Life Insurance.
Other tenants in the building include the Real Estate Board of New York and Sotheby’s Institute of Art. Feil said that in the past year the company’s executed 90,000 square feet worth of leases at the building, including a 4,000-square-foot lease with Hudson Executive Capital, the hedge fund founded by former JPMorgan CFO Doug Braunstein.
Innova Health Partners, Brazilian national oil company Petrobas and the Newport Group also recently signed leases.
Trendy food hall Urbanspace operates out of the building’s ground floor retail.