JPMorgan’s big adventure
Bank’s foray into the future
A FTER
a 10-year quest for a new headquarters tower, JPMorgan Chase is set to replace antiquated 270 Park Ave. with a much taller and larger skyscraper.
But it’s been a long, strange trip for the nation’s largest bank, which found itself frustrated several times trying to establish a new home — illustrating how difficult it is for a huge company with highly specialized needs.
JPMorgan Chase didn’t want to leave 270 Park Ave.
Jamie Dimon’s troops love being close to Grand Central Terminal, through which many of its top-paid execs and traders pass daily.
The old building, opened in 1959, was designed for an age when Xerox copier machines were the last word in technology. But under old East Midtown zoning, JPM couldn’t replace 270 Park with a new structure even of the same size.
JPM occupies all or part of 14 buildings in the city, covering nearly 6.5 million square feet in Manhattan — mostly at 245, 270 and 277 Park Ave., 383 Madison Ave. and 28 Liberty St. (the former Chase Plaza, now owned by China’s Fosun.) Not one of them is suitable for JPMorgan’s headquarters and trading needs.
“This isn’t the 1980s,” said a real estate dealmaker attuned to the bank’s thinking. “Financial companies of Chase’s size and complexity can’t just refurbish a dinosaur and say, ‘ We can squeeze in a little more fiber-optic cable.’ They need to design their own electronics, sustainability features and redundant systems, which you can only fully do in a new building.”
The breakthrough came with the rezoning of East Midtown last year. The complicated new rules basically allow larger new towers to go up in exchange for developers’ payments to the city for transit and publicarea improvements.
But before new zoning kicked in, JPM — pressured by competition from Goldman Sachs, Bank of America and other institutions working out of newer quarters with superior infrastructure — exhausted every option hunting for a different location.
The first serious try was at 130 Liberty St., the former Deutsche Bank building just south of Ground Zero that was ruined on 9/11 — but still standing when Dimon announced plans for a new tower there in 2007.
The bank was to pay the Port Authority $290 million for a 99-year ground lease. The tower would have 42 stories and room for 7,000 employees. “We’re proud of going back home,” Dimon said — referring to JPM’s downtown roots.
To preserve a parcel of ground to be used for a new St. Nicholas Greek Orthodox Church — a pet project of former Gov. George Pataki — architect Gene
Kohn of Kohn Pedersen Fox had to cantilever six trading floors above the church site.
The protruding floors quickly caused the design to be dubbed the “beerbelly tower” in The Post. Kohn said he might slim the
“midriff bulge.” But a thornier problem was that the PA and the Lower Manhattan Development Corp. couldn’t take down 130 Liberty St. after a fatal fire in August 2007 brought demolition to a halt.
As JPM honchos grew antsy over the delay, they caught a break in early 2008 when they picked up the remains of Bear Stearns in a $237 million fire sale — including the collapsed investment bank’s 383 Madison Ave. headquarters, a relatively modern structure equipped with the needed trading floors.
It appeared to solve at least some of JPM’s problems, so the bank dropped its 130 Liberty St. plan. But even newish buildings grow old quickly in the digital age. Dimon gradually discovered that 383’s trading floors weren’t getting it done the way trading floors were doing for BofA at One Bryant Park.
In the summer of 2013, Dimon sold downtown’s Chase Plaza — part of a reevaluation of the bank’s real estate needs, which once again included the search for a new HQ.
Dimon “kicked tires” at Brookfield’s Manhattan West and Vornado’s Pennsylvania Hotel site. He also considered relocating its trading operations to Stamford, Conn., where UBS was planning to unload on the cheap the world’s largest trading floor — 100,000 square feet
Although a bank rep told The Post in 2014, “No decision has yet been made to move from 270 Park,” Dimon settled on a destination: two new skyscrapers planned at Related Companies’ Hudson Yards. One would be an 1,100foot-tall giant at 504-522 W. 34th St., where Coach Inc. owned the land but would sell it to Related once Coach moved to its own new digs at 10 Hudson Yards. The second would be at the rising structure now known as 50 Hudson Yards, future home of BlackRock.
But City Hall balked at JPM’s re- quest for $1 billion in subsidies for the $6.5 billion development. The proposal died in October 2014. Afterward, speculation ran rampant about Dimon’s intentions.
Some scenarios seemed farfetched. In December 2016, the Wall Street Journal reported that SL Green, which was about to start work on One Vanderbilt, had offered the exasperated bank a swap — it would give JPM the new skyscraper in exchange for 270 Park Ave. and 383 Madison Ave. But Dimon patiently waited out the rezoning. The terms worked out by former Planning Commissioner Carl Weisbrod and his successor, Marisa
Lago, incorporating input from area “stakeholders,” at last gave JPM the flexibility it needed.
The new tower will stretch 500 feet closer to heaven than its current HQ. No architect has yet been chosen. The bank is gobbling up air rights from neighboring sites and hopes to begin demolition early next year.
Some architects and preservation groups are howling for retroactive landmark status for 270 Park Ave. — which the city’s Landmarks Preservation Commission declined to do in the past. Such a step would sabotage the project for good. But with any luck, and if reason prevails, Dimon will finally get to build the trophy that’s eluded him for 10 long years.
A new tenant is coming to Fisher Brothers’ 299 Park Ave. — Traxys Group, which signed for 29,771 square feet. Traxys, a commodity trader-merchant in metals and natural resources, will move next year from 825 Third Ave.
The signing brings 299 Park Ave. to 85 percent leased.
The tower will begin a major capital improvement program this year.
A CBRE team repped Traxys. Newmark Knight Frank and a Fisher Brothers in-house team repped the landlord.