[NYguy]

Here’s hoping we at least get a new facade on this eyesore…


https://nypost.com/2022/09/11/sl-gre...hina-firm/amp/

SL Green takes control of Park Ave. office tower from bankrupt China firm

By Steve Cuozzo
September 11, 2022

Pressing its campaign to establish a formidable East Midtown core, SL Green added another trophy to its burgeoning portfolio. The city’s largest commercial landlord purchased 245 Park Avenue out of bankruptcy in a deal that closed on Friday.

SL Green’s unexpected, 100% acquisition of the 48-story, 1.8 million square-foot office tower climaxed a grueling battle with the tower’s distressed former owner HNA, an affiliate of China’s PWM Property Management.

Buoyed by a revitalized Park Avenue-area leasing market, publicly traded SL Green, which developed One Vanderbilt, is on an East Side roll. It’s a joint-venture partner with Vornado in 280 Park Ave. and recently bought 450 Park Ave. for $455 million. It is meanwhile re-developing One Madison Avenue where IBM signed a huge lease. Last week, it sold more than half of the Lipstick Building’s office floors to Memorial Sloan-Kettering for about $300 million.

Chief executive Marc Holliday said that 245 Park will immediately begin a repositioning and upgrading. The plan includes new lobbies on the tower’s Park and Lexington avenue sides, a re-designed public plaza, infrastructure advances, new retail storefronts and tenants’ amenities such as fitness and wellness centers and food services curated by Daniel Boulud’s Dinex company.

KPF architects will assist on the redesign.

A key part will be to re-imagine the Park Avenue-side plaza so as to better integrate it into other pedestrian-friendly changes planned in the corridor.

What’s more, the tower “has an extraordinary rooftop that isn’t much utilized,” Holliday said. “The great views it provides might become open to the public — not like Summit [at the top of One Vanderbilt], but like a park in the sky.”