L&L Holding’s David Levinson dropped some details yesterday about the reinvention of 380 Madison Ave. and the Lord Norman Foster design for 425 Park Ave.
Levinson, speaking before brokers at the YM/WREA, said the firm won a beauty contest against seven other contenders and has been hired by ground owner RREEF to overhaul 380 Madison — what will become a 1 million square-foot building on the blockfront between East 46th and 47th streets.
The building was developed by Harold Uris and then redeveloped by Howard Ronson’s HRO International. RREEF bought the ground and Sheldon Solow owns the leasehold, which ends January 2014. Current tenant the United Nations is on track to leave early, Levinson said. Documents show options by the leaseholder to purchase the building have expired.
Levinson said, “380 is being re-imagined” because even if reskinned, “it would not be the forward-thinking building that would attract tenants.”
The biggest risk, he said, would be that “you put a ton of money into it and it’s just another glass-and-steel building in the Grand Central District. You have to deliver a trophy headquarters.”
They are working with architects KPF to literally take out floor slabs and add the removed floor area to the top, bringing more height and views. The engineering is very difficult, and Levinson has hired the Severud Associates team to work on it. One pencil rendering shows the base facade leaning out at an angle over the sidewalk.
It would be easier to tear it all down and rebuild, but the city previously downzoned areas of Manhattan. So if a building is completely torn down, the owner loses the ability to construct the same amount of space.
Levinson said this is also an issue at 425 Park Ave., where they are negotiating with city officials for the reinvented building to cantilever over an open plaza, where he foresees art exhibitions.
Current zoning calls for retail stores and a straight up 85-foot streetwall before setbacks can be taken to the façade.
“The city wants retail,” said Levinson, who would like to avoid adding stores even though that income would be twice what he would get for top-of-tower office floors.
The current plan is to leave 25 percent of the building in place so as to rebuild as of right, but Levinson is upset that the city now wants them to “pay” for the “overbuilt portion” — that is, the 3-FAR that is over the current allowed 15-FAR.
Downtown at 195 Broadway, however, at his building opposite the Fulton Transit Center, approvals are in place to create all-glass retail stores inside the marble-columned lobby with a white-table restaurant on the Fulton Street side.
HarperCollins just leased 180,000 square feet and another 350,000 square feet may be available there when Thomson Reuters’ lease runs out at the end of 2015, he said.
L&L’s newly purchased 222 Broadway — bought with Beacon Capital — has just signed a deal with WeWork for more than 122,000 square feet and has another deal on tap.
As Post colleague Steve Cuozzo first revealed, L&L is also reinventing 114 Fifth Ave., where it will spend $100 million on all new mechanicals and other items to attract tech tenants. Rents will be $75 to $80 a foot.
“Do I hear $90?” Levinson asked of the 300,000 square feet that will soon become available.
Levinson also mentioned in passing that Jeff Sutton and SL Green Realty Corp. had signed Urban Outfitters at 180 Broadway across the street from his buildings, as we previously reported, and that TD Bank had also taken a space.
We’ve now learned that TD Bank signed a 20-year deal for 2,500 square feet on the corner at John Street, where it will spend more than $50 million over the life of the lease, which works out to more than $1,000 a square foot.
TD was represented by Joanne Podell and Chris Stanton of Cushman & Wakefield, while Sutton represented the building.
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Eileen Fisher is renewing its lease early and expanding to 62,000 square feet at 111 Fifth Ave. by adding a 19,000 square-foot floor. The whole shebang has been extended by 15 years to co-terminate in 2029.
David Falk, Daniel Levine and Aaron Cukier of Newmark Grubb Knight Frank represented the tenant that will now occupies the entire 10th and 11th floors and part of 13 for a total of 43,000 square feet. It will add the sixth floor of 19,000 square feet when Medidata moves to 350 Hudson St. later this fall.
For elbow room, the company also had some space at 22 W. 19th on a short-term sublease.
The Newmark brokers still conducted a thorough search, but the company “didn’t find a contiguous block of space that they found exciting,” said Falk.
But they loved their current high ceiling space, their current building and the Winter Organization ownership, which made it easy to reup and was represented in-house by Rob Fink.
Asking rents in quality avenue buildings are in the $60s a square foot, while Chelsea rents are popping higher.
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More of the city’s growing tech, legal and even financial firms are starting to space hunt.
The cloud and enterprise software firm Salesforce.com is seeking another 60,000 square feet. Last year, the San Francisco-based firm leased 74,349 square feet at 685 Third Ave. in a former glass-and-steel Pfizer property.
After disclosing that its biggest acquisition, Buddy Media, was burning through more than $40 million a year, Salesforce merged it with Radian6, a Canadian-based acquisition from 2011 that was bringing in $35 million a year and on target to make $50 million. Eventually, the two were rolled into Salesforce Marketing Cloud, which then laid off 100 people worldwide.
The company reported overall revenue of $3.05 billion in its fiscal year ended Jan. 31, and quarterly revenue of $835 million — both up 35 percent over the prior year.
After growing its cloud-based services, the company now wants to expand on Earth in Midtown South.
Gus Field of Cushman & Wakefield is leading the search and did not respond to requests for comment.
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Cushman & Wakefield’s Joe Cabrera is representing FactSet Research, which occupies roughly 60,000 square feet at Vornado Realty Trust’s 90 Park Ave. and is seeking about 150,000 square feet. The Norwalk, Conn.-based company had no comment.
David Rosenbloom of C&W is working with the giftware industry, which is being booted from 7 W. 34th St. Vornado is converting it to office space with no showroom use. That search is said to be for 100,000 square feet, while CoStar shows that Vornado has 400,000 square feet available at the end of 2014.
