UPDATED, 12:23, Sept. 16: Kevin Chisholm’s 60 Guilders and the Carlyle Group can now start selling office condominium units at their $207 million conversion of a pair of Garment District buildings they bought a year ago.
The state Attorney General’s office has approved the firms’ offering plan to sell 21 units at the 11-story building at 20 West 33rd Street and its neighbor at 18 West 33rd Street with a total projected sellout of $206.6 million, or about $9.8 million per unit.
Chisholm said the idea is to market the condos first to the existing tenants in the building.
“If a tenant is paying $50 per square foot and you’re going to be in your space for at least 10 years, I think it makes economic sense to pay $1,000 a foot,” he said. “There are a lot of benefits to ownership.”
Chisholm’s firm partnered with private equity giant the Carlyle Group last year to buy the 153,000-square-foot office property from Midtown-based Kamber Management Company for $111 million. The property’s primary use will remain office, but will now house office condos.
The firms have partnered on multiple projects, including the office condo conversion of the bottom three floors at the Corinthian apartment tower at 330 East 38th Street.
Michael Rudder of Rudder Property Group, which is marketing the condos, said there’s about 10 million square feet worth of office-condo product on the market in New York City, which is not nearly enough to meet the demand.
“While 10 million square feet would be sizable in any other market, in New York it’s just a drop in the bucket,” he said.
This post was updated to include comments from Chisholm and Rudder.