Lower Manhattan Office Tower Hits Market, Could Fetch $300M

A large Lower Manhattan office building is up for sale as the market faces uncertainty and a drop-off in demand amid the coronavirus pandemic. 

The 22-story, 1.1M SF Four New York Plaza office building, which is currently owned by Edge Fund Advisors and HSBC Alternative Investments, is being marketed for sale by CBRE’s Darcy Stacom and Bill Shanahan, a spokesperson for the brokerage confirmed to Bisnow.

The building could sell for over $300M, according to Real Estate Alert, which first reported the listing. The current owners purchased the building for $270M in 2012 at $242 per SF. CBRE declined to comment on the listing. 

The building's current tenants include JPMorgan Chase, which takes up 850K SF, American Media, which takes up 50K SF, and the New York Daily News, which also takes up 50K SF, according to REAlert. JPMorgan once owned the building, which is one of the most southernmost on the island of Manhattan at the tip of the Financial District, but the bank sold it to Harbor Group International during the Great Financial Crisis.

The prospect of the deal comes after a tough Q3 for investment sales, with only 21 Manhattan commercial properties changing hands throughout the quarter. Activity declined 30% from the previous quarter and 74% year-over-year. Earlier in the year, investors said they were seeing big discounts on office buildings in gateway cities such as New York.

“It’s not a huge surprise. After March, what happened was the market basically froze up," Avison Young principal and head of Tri-State Investment Sales James Nelson told Bisnow earlier this month. "Sellers, unless they had a real reason to transact, took their properties off the market.”