The Real Deal New York

522 Fifth Avenue, on the corner of 44th Street, is a 23-story office building with 24,000 square feet of retail space at its base. In 1896, restauranteur Louis Sherry built the McKim, Mead & White-designed skyscraper to house his eponymous hotel. In 1919, Sherrys Hotel closed, and was converted into offices. Another reconstruction, in 1961, replaced its intricate faade with limestone and added 12 stories to the original 11. In 2005, J. P. Morgan Chase, the longtime owner of the building, sold it for $165 million to Stellar Management and the Rockpoint Group. A year earlier, in 2004, Stellar and Rockpoint had bought the land under the building for $53 million from multiple owners. In a sign of the boom times, in 2006, Scott Lawlors Broadway Partners bought it from Stellar and Rockpoint for $420 million. Morgan Stanley, which bought the building from Lawlor, eventually converted its base into a two-level corner retail space.

In October 2014, Ashkenazy Acquisition, a New York City-based firm that invests in retail and office real estate, together with Germanys Deka Immobilien Investment, bought the two condominiums that make up the retail portion of the building, 24,411 square feet in total, for $170 million from Morgan Stanley. Ashkenazy may need to spend up to $30 million to redo the storefronts and increase the square footage. On the sidewalk in front of the address stands a landmarked freestanding clock. MK