The owner of one of the hottest techie buildings in Midtown South is looking to sell the 675,000-square-foot office property for as much as $800 million.
Orda Management Corp. put the mini-campus it redeveloped several years ago at 225 Park Avenue South – and filled with the likes of Facebook and Buzzfeed – up for sale, sources told The Real Deal.
Orda, led by the father-and-son team of Morton and Thomas Silver, is looking to get somewhere in the range of $750 million to $800 million for the pair of connected buildings just north of Union Square Park, sources said. That works out to about $1,185 per square foot on the high-end.
Representatives for Orda could not be immediately reached for comment. A Newmark Knight Frank team led by Brett Siegel, Evan Layne and Jean Celestin is marketing the property, the first big assignment the team’s picked up since leaving Eastdil Secured this summer to head up the sales team at Newmark.
Orda has owned the two buildings at 225 and 233 Park Avenue South for more than 60 years – long before tech and media companies transformed Midtown South into New York’s version of Silicon Alley. But as demand for trendy office space in prime areas around the Flatiron District grew, the family firm took the opportunity to upgrade and reposition their early 1900s-era properties – creating a blueprint that others followed.
The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey made 225 PAS its home after the 9/11 terrorist attack destroyed the agency’s headquarters at the World Trade Center. When the Port Authority returned to Lower Manhattan in new digs at 4 World Trade Center in 2014, Orda kicked off a major renovation that included connecting 225 and 223 through a new stairway, installing new elevator and HVAC systems and putting in amenities like bike racks and a new lobby.
Orda signed its first big new deal at the property in 2014, when BuzzFeed inked a lease for 200,000 square feet. Facebook signed a lease two years later for another 200,000 square feet as it ran out of space to expand its offices nearby at 770 Broadway in Greenwich Village.
(The social media giant recently signed a lease for 1.5 million square feet at Hudson Yards. It’s not clear if Facebook will keep its other offices or consolidate them on the Far West Side.)
Orda Management refinanced 225 Park Avenue South in 2017 with a $430 million loan from Barclays, which was arranged by Dustin Stolly and Jordan Roeshclaub of Newmark Knight Frank.
Since Orda’s redevelopment, others have combined pairs of older industrial buildings into desirable campuses, such as Stellar Management’s repositioning of a pair of former loft buildings into One Soho Square, which is leased to companies like Flatiron Health and Glossier.