SL Green puts Daily News building up for sale

REIT is asking $900M for Art Deco tower

The Daily News Building at 220 East 42nd Street and SL Green CEO Marc Holliday (Credit: Getty Images)
The Daily News Building at 220 East 42nd Street and SL Green CEO Marc Holliday (Credit: Getty Images)

SL Green Realty has put its Daily News building up for sale with an asking price of $900 million, sources told The Real Deal.

The real estate investment trust is seeking offers for either full ownership of the 1.2 million-square-foot building in East Midtown at 220 East 42nd Street or a joint venture interest, according to marketing materials.

The $900 million asking price values the property at nearly $740 per square foot.

A representative for SL Green declined to comment. A Cushman & Wakefield team of Doug Harmon, Adam Spies, Josh King, Kevin Donner, Adam Doneger and Marcella Fasulo is handling the sale, marketing materials show. The brokers declined to comment.

The Marc Holliday-led SL Green had been mulling the sale of its Art Deco building earlier this year, as The Real Deal originally reported, with teams from Cushman, CBRE, JLL and Newmark Knight Frank making pitches.

Sign Up for the undefined Newsletter

By signing up, you agree to TheRealDeal Terms of Use and acknowledge the data practices in our Privacy Policy.

SL Green paid $256 million in 2003 to buy the 37-story tower, which was famously featured in the 1978 “Superman” movie as the headquarters of the fictional Daily Planet. The property is 97 percent leased with a weighted average lease term of 16 years.

Floor plates at the base of the building are relatively large — spanning roughly 65,000 square feet — while the tower floors range from 9,800 to 12,000 square feet. Average in-place rents are $57 per square foot, which are about 12 percent below projected rents, according to marketing materials.

Tenants include the Visiting Nurse Service of New York, the television station WPIX 11, Omnicom and the United Nations.

In February, the nonprofit Young Adult Institute signed a lease for more than 75,000 square feet in the building in a relocation from its current home at 460 West 34th Street. SL Green paid slightly more than $290 million last month for a majority interest in the Hudson Yards-area building, property records show.