IBM to anchor SL Green’s One Madison Avenue

Firm taking over 300K sf at tower

Andrew Mathias, president, SL Green (SL Green, iStock)
Andrew Mathias, president, SL Green (SL Green, iStock)

SL Green Realty has landed a new anchor tenant at its One Madison Avenue.

IBM signed a 16-year lease for 328,000 square feet at the yet-to-be-completed office property in the Flatiron District. The deal covers portions of floors two and seven, entire floors eight through 10 and a portion of the ground floor, where the company will have an exclusive lobby entrance.

IBM, which will consolidate employees from 10 other city offices, was represented by Patrick Murphy, Josh Kuriloff and Winston Schromm of Cushman & Wakefield. Paul Glickman, Alex Chudnoff, Diana Biasotti and Ben Bass of JLL represented the landlord.

One Madison Avenue occupies a full-block site, bound by Park Avenues and Madison Avenue and East 23rd and East 24th Streets. SL Green acquired the 1.4 million-square-foot property for $918 million in 2005 and later announced it would redevelop the site as an office building, which was expected to cost $2.3 billion.

The property consists of an existing 900,000-square-foot limestone building under a newly constructed glass tower. Among the addresses IBM will depart are 590 Madison Avenue and 51 Astor Place, the New York Post reported. The firm’s square footage at One Madison Avenue will be less than the space it is leaving.

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The deal with the Armonk-based tech company comes nearly five months after Chelsea Piers Fitness signed a 20-year lease for 56,000 square feet at the building.

Plans for the “state-of-the-art facility” include “every fitness product and experience available in the market today, as well as new concepts and technology,” SL Green managing director Brett Herschenfeld said at the time.

Demand for Manhattan office space has more than doubled from a year ago, but availability in the borough hit a new high in February.

Just under 94 million square feet of office space is available for rent in Manhattan, according to a report from Colliers. The availability rate reached 17.4 percent last month, up 74 percent since the start of the pandemic in March 2020.

SL Green held interests in 73 buildings totaling 34.9 million square feet as of Dec. 31. This included ownership interests in 26.9 million square feet of Manhattan buildings and 7.1 million square feet securing debt and preferred equity investments.

Holden Walter-Warner contributed reporting.