Midtown’s Grand Hyatt Hotel is getting torn down.
The glass-sheathed tower — Donald Trump’s first major Manhattan project — is being bought out by developers who plan to raze it and replace it with a 2-million-square-foot, mixed-use space.
Manhattan developer TF Cornerstone and computer billionaire Michael Dell’s MSD Partners are in contract to buy the 100-year-old hotel and take over its ground lease, which expires in 2077, from Hyatt, they announced on Thursday.
In its place, they’re planning a new skyscraping project that would include offices and a scaled-down Hyatt hotel.
The land under the Hyatt, which includes numerous underground concourses that connect to Grand Central Terminal, was owned by the New York State’s Urban Development Corp. — until it was sold to the MTA in December 2017 for $13 million. Changing ownership of that lease would require city consent.
Building the new project would also require state approval.
It’s still unclear if the sale is contingent on the developers receiving all the city and state approvals for the new tower, which could take many months.
The developers already own the air rights from Grand Central Terminal, which they purchased in 2016, and say they would use them to build the large tower.
The 26-story, 1,298-room hotel was built in 1919 and rebuilt and remodeled in the late 1970s by Trump. He exited the investment years ago.
At the time, it was a brash move by the young Queens native who corralled government approvals and tax exemptions along with a commitment by Hyatt, which led to the rejuvenation of a neglected area suffering from urban decay.
