The Four Seasons, New York’s most storied restaurant for nearly 60 years, will live anew.
Ending months of speculation, owners Julian Niccolini and Alex von Bidder have signed a lease at 280 Park Ave., where it will open in 2017. The move will follow the restaurant’s closing in July at the Seagram Building, where landlord Aby Rosen declined to renew its lease.
The ink is barely dry on the new lease for just over 19,000 square feet at the office building owned by both Vornado Realty Trust and SL Green Realty Corp., sources told the Post.
The real estate companies, led by Steve Roth and Mark Holliday, respectively, were so intent on getting the Four Seasons that they came up with millions in concessions for the build-out, sources said.
The Post’s Steve Cuozzo first reported the Four Seasons was considering moving to 280 Park more than a year ago in April 2015.
The interior will be designed by Brazilian architect Isay Weinfeld, a choice made after a selection group that included von Bidder and Niccolini, their partners Matthew and Edgar Bronfman and architectural critic Paul Goldberger, met with numerous competitors.
LePatner Project Solutions, headed by the restaurant’s attorney Barry LePatner, will oversee construction.
“He is so quiet and so calm,” said one of those impressed by Weinfeld.
The architect’s only other project in New York is the Jardim, an 11-story twin-towered residential condominium in Chelsea that will be connected by a brick-lined tunnel.
“This will be a Four Seasons for the 21st century,” said a source, who was not authorized to speak as a joint announcement is to come next Tuesday.
The Four Seasons was represented in the deal by Michael Laginestra and Michael Geoghegan of CBRE, while the owners had in-house brokers, Glen Weiss of Vornado and SLG’s Steve Durels.
The restaurant, now located at the Seagram Building in 29,000 square feet, is scheduled to have its last event on July 16 while Wright Auction will sell the contents there on July 26 in an event expected to attract even the most jaded society types, who have been regulars all their lives.
The restaurant has been at the Seagram Building since it was installed by the Bronfman family in 1959. Current building owners Aby Rosen and Michael Fuchs of RFR declined to renew its lease, which ends July 31.
Rosen was raising $30 million to refresh the space. The landmarked dining rooms will now be run by the Major Food Group team of Mario Carbone, Rich Torrisi and business partner Jeff Zalanick.
The Seagram venue will also no longer be called The Four Seasons because Niccolini and von Bidder own the name.
None of the parties reached would comment.
