Vanbarton Snags $352M Refi For Grand Central Office Tower

Vanbarton Group landed a fresh nine-figure loan for its nearly full Midtown office tower.

Goldman Sachs provided a $352 million loan for 425 Lexington Avenue, a 31-story, 747,000-square-foot Class A office building next to Grand Central Terminal, according to property records. A source with knowledge of the deal said the single-property CMBS deal was pre-placed entirely with BlackRock.

The debt replaces a $290 million loan from New York Life Insurance Company and Northwestern Mutual. It was first reported by PincusCo.

The floating-rate, interest-only loan has an initial two-year term with three one-year extension options. Proceeds will retire the existing debt, fund $30 million in reserves, cover closing costs and return roughly $21 million to the ownership, according to sources.

A JLL debt advisory team led by Chris Peck represented Vanbarton.

The refinancing comes as the building is almost full. The tower is 99.1 percent occupied, with law firm Simpson Thacher & Bartlett serving as the anchor tenant. The firm’s global headquarters occupies about 95 percent of the building.

Vanbarton, led by Gary Tischler and Richard Coles, acquired the property for $701 million in 2018 in one of that year’s largest Manhattan office sales. The seller was a client of JPMorgan Asset Management, while Hines managed the property at the time of the transaction. The tower had previously traded in 2013 for $665 million.

The refinancing adds to a growing list of large office debt deals in Manhattan as lenders continue to back well-leased, high-quality buildings. The Midtown office market continues to gain steam as tenants ink deals in high-quality buildings close to transportation hubs.

Tenants leased 22.8 million square feet during the first six months of 2026, the strongest first half since 2002, according to Colliers. The surge has pushed average asking rents to $78.03 per square foot, the highest level since July 2020, while the borough’s availability rate fell to 13.2 percent