Air to spare
Former Financial Center lobby to get face-lift
THE
former World Financial Center’s public areas little resemble their old, stodgy selves since the complex’s transformation into Brookfield Place — and now, one of the few remaining vestiges of the buttoneddown WFC is getting the magic-wand treatment.
Brookfield Property Partners plans to redesign the vast but underused lobby of 200 Liberty St., the 1.6-millionsquare-foot office tower originally called 1 WFC. The expensively crafted, two-level lobby personifies late 1980s corporate clout. It’s to be remade with a brighter, publicfriendly look more in keeping with the rest of Brookfield Place, imposingly situated between the World Trade Center and the Hudson River.
“The vision is to make it a grand, open space that brings all the parks and views from outside into the lobby and effect a connection to the outdoor space,” said Brookfield senior vice president Mikael Nahmias. “The idea is to make it a cool place to hang out.”
Work is to start in early 2019 and be completed by the third quarter of 2020. Among other alterations, the mezzanine that runs along the lobby’s north and west sides will be removed “to bring in light and air and create a sense of grandeur,” he said.
The redesign will also allow for improved retail space and cafe seating in the lobby.
Brookfield similarly altered the lobbies of 250 and 300 Vesey and 225 Liberty St. Brookfield Place’s other towers. Nahmias wouldn’t say how much the 200 Liberty job would cost, but noted that similar upgrades to 250 Vesey were “in the neighborhood of $55 million in 2014, and this is going to be commensurate with that.”
The project also includes elevator cab modernization and, more visibly, a new life for a currently unused, 16,000-square-foot outdoor space at the south end of the tower’s second floor.
“We’ve never done anything with it,” Nahmias said. “The plan is to create an accessible terrace for an anchor tenant, or, depending on how leasing goes, a buildingwide amenity.”
Future tenants are much on Brookfield’s mind at 200 Liberty. Although the tower is 98 percent occupied to tenants including law firm Cadwalader and insurer XL Catlin, several leases will roll in 2020.
“We’re marketing 400,000 square feet in advance,” Nahmias said. Asking rents are from the low $60s per square foot to the low $70s, he said. GoldPoint Partners is leaving Midtown South for Fisher Brothers’ 299 Park Ave. at East 48th Street.
The firm, which manages more than $12 billion of private equity assets, has leased 29,768 square feet on the 37th floor, and is the fourth financial company to ink a full-floor lease at the tower in the past eight months.
GoldPoint plans to move in the second quarter of 2019. Terms were not disclosed but sources said the asking rent was in the high $90s per square foot.
Like many other middleaged postwar towers in East Midtown, 299 Park Ave. is scheduled for major capital improvements.
Fisher Brothers has tapped the Rockwell Group to redesign the lobby for a more open feel and a transformed entrance, among other changes.
Cushman & Wakefield’s Richard Bernstein, Steve Braun and Christine Colley repped the tenant. Fisher was repped inhouse by Marc Packman and Clark Briffel with Newmark Knight Frank’s Andrew Sachs and Pete Shimkin.