Posted May 19, 2025, 3:31 PM
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New Yorker for life
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Join Date: Jul 2001
Location: Borough of Jersey
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https://commercialobserver.com/2025/05/chrysler-building-sale-2025/
Chrysler Building On the Market as Its Landowner Seeks to Boost Income
Cooper Union has hired Savills to sell the Art Deco dowager in what would be its first proper trade in nearly a decade
BY LOIS WEISS
MAY 19, 2025
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Savills is officially marketing the Art Deco landmark at 405 Lexington Avenue on behalf of Cooper Union as was first reported by The Promote. The school wrestled away operations of the property from RFR Holding earlier this year for, among other things, not paying ground rent that had escalated to over $32 million a year and that was due to rise to over $41 million a year in 2028.
Income from the office tenants — including the law firm Moses & Singer, the entertainment agents of Creative Artists Agency and architect Ted Moudis — still does not cover that ground rent, and the building’s 1.2 million square feet has a vacancy of around 15 percent, according to previously reported estimates
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RFR principal Aby Rosen has said the building needs an infusion of more than $100 million — and that’s after he spent that much bringing many items up to date and creating amenities on the 27th floor.
“We are moving on … but we are also going to look at maybe… we’ll get another shot at it… If they’re looking for a serious developer to want to put in money,” Rosen said in a December interview when the court battle was winding down. “We made them a huge offer to put $200 million in equity again after we already [put in money] and they don’t know what they want,” he said of Cooper Union. “When they know what they want, they’ll come back to the promise — you know we’re still the best to do that type of deal, and we have our own money.”
While office rents at the nearby — and much newer — One Vanderbilt have hit $300 per square foot on its top floors, the Chrysler Building, with its lower ceiling heights and nearly hundred-year-old frame, has struggled to break $100 per foot.
Attorney Jonathan Mechanic of Fried Frank said one issue is that the center core floorplates are too “dated” for modern offices as they have awkward shapes and carveouts while the upper stories are very small. Still, he said, “It’s a spectacular canvas with Art Deco charm.”
Others familiar with the tower and its drama agree.
“There aren’t that many global icons in the world and this is one of them, so there will be an enormous appetite for the building,” said Woody Heller of Branton Realty Services, who was in charge of the sales process on behalf of the lender in 1993 while with JLL and then for Cooper Union in 2017 while with Savills. “But it hasn’t been actively marketed since the pandemic. Now, with the resurgence of the office market and notoriety of the building, in theory, if fixed up and rejuvenated, it could be able to lease.”
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To boost income from the tower, industry experts have long drooled over resurrecting its derelict Crown Club inside the peak along with installing a boutique hotel or luxury residential rentals.
Rosen said he had plans to create a hotel in the base from around the fifth floor — which has a huge outdoor terrace — up to the 12th floor along with opening the Cloud Club, a bar, restaurant, entertainment and event space, along with six restaurants. “We had a huge master plan for it in place,” Rosen told Commercial Observer in December. “We started the renovation, but we didn’t get to the finish line.”
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