CBS buys Hell’s Kitchen property from Extell for $27M

Sale expands broadcaster’s 1M sf footprint on West 57th Street

ViacomCBS President & CEO Robert Bakish and 500 West 57th. (Getty, Twitter via 500w57)
ViacomCBS President & CEO Robert Bakish and 500 West 57th. (Getty, Twitter via 500w57)

 

CBS Broadcasting, an entity owned by ViacomCBS, has expanded its already massive campus in Hell’s Kitchen.

The broadcaster bought a site at 500 West 57th Street from Extell Development for $26.75 million, according to property records filed with the city. The lot on the southwest corner of West 57th Street extends CBS’s 1 million-square-foot campus on the block between 10th and 11th Avenues.

A ViacomCBS spokesperson confirmed the company bought the site, and said it aims to use it to support its existing operations.

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Gary Barnett’s Extell bought the seven-story, 27,000-square-foot corner property in 2017 for $19 million. The brick-facade building was constructed in 1913 for the Herman Knapp Memorial Eye Hospital. Charles Ekblom, a now-deceased landlord, bought it from Columbia University in the 1960s, and the building was placed in a family trust until Extell bought it, The Real Deal previously reported.

Extell did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Until recently, the entire building was leased to Addiction Care Interventions Chemical Dependency Treatment Centers (ACI), which ran an in-patient drug-rehabilitation facility there. The center appears to be permanently closed.

In December, ACI and its owner settled Medicaid fraud allegations in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York and agreed to pay $6 million, according to Brooklyn Daily Eagle. Calls to ACI’s Hell’s Kitchen and Garment District locations were not answered.