Columbia, Normandy close on $205M purchase of 250 Church Street

Columbia Property Trust and Normandy Real Estate Partners have closed on their $205.5 million purchase of 250 Church Street in Tribeca, broker Avison Young announced Monday. They have also nixed plans to make it a residential building.

The Real Deal first reported in February that Normandy and Columbia were in contract to purchase the building from Norvin Properties.  Norvin had filed plans in 2017 to convert the 16-story, 237,000-square-foot office building into a 107-unit residential property, but Normandy and Columbia plan to redevelop it as boutique office space.

The building is vacant. Its most recent tenant was the city’s Human Resources Administration.

An Avison Young team of Vincent Carrega, Neil Helman, Charles Kingsley, Jon Epstein and James Nelson brokered the deal. Normandy is led by founders and partners Finn Wentworth, David Welsh and Jeff Gronning.

Kingsley said in a statement that the sale represents “the continued interest in creating well-located boutique NYC buildings and the trend of redeveloping older office properties into some of the most exciting office space locations on the market today.”

Columbia announced in October that it would buy Normandy in a deal worth about $100 million. The companies had previously worked together on multiple projects, including a $300 million office development at 799 Broadway in Greenwich Village standing 12 stories tall and spanning 182,000 square feet.