Flipping bird to Third
MARX Realty has owned 708 Third Ave., a 500,000-square-foot office tower at East 44th Street, for about 10 years. But now it’s done with Third Avenue.
How so? As part of a $45 million repositioning of the prewar building, Marx is changing its address from 708 Third — to 10 Grand Central.
And while some other, more modern buildings carry “prestige” monikers — including 2 Grand Central Tower next door on East 44th Street — Marx is going all out to wipe 708 Third’s old address off the map. It’s closing the Third Avenue office lobby entrance, which will be used instead for a yet-to-be-signed fast-casual restaurant.
“We don’t want to be associated with Third Avenue,” Marx CEO and President
Craig Deitelzweig declared. “We want to be a Grand Central building. Most of our tenants come to work through Grand Central Terminal every day and so do our visitors.”
He said he’s “100 percent” done with Third Avenue. “A lot of its buildings are commodity buildings,” he said of the postwar structures in the East 40s. “We don’t want to be like that.”
Third Avenue between 40th and 59th streets is a healthy commercial corridor full of major companies, but it lacks the more glamorous identities of boulevards to the west — and of Grand Central.
As a result, say JLL brokers who are marketing 10 Grand Central, average Third Avenue asking rents are much lower than those for comparable buildings in the Grand Central submarket — $64.76 per square foot compared with $91.26 per square foot.
Most of Third Avenue’s office buildings went up in the years after the el came down in 1955. But 708 Third is a prewar outlier designed by Ely Jacques Kahn, who was also the architect of the Bergdorf Goodman.
The 1931 structure features numerous romantic setbacks and Beaux Arts details. Deitelzweig said the plan is to “embrace the heritage.”
An existing, secondary entrance at 155 E. 44th St., which was the historic original entrance, will be redesigned by Studio Architecture’s David
Burns as a striking, fourstory entry portal framed in brushed brass fins and glossblack brickwork. Uniformed doormen will greet tenants and visitors entering the intimate new lobby.
The reimagined location emphasizes a “hospitality focus” for tenants. “We’re hop- ing for a building very different from any other” on Third Avenue, Deitelzweig said. Among the additions geared to 21st-century users will be a new lounge, 36-seat conference facility and landscaped terrace, all on the seventh floor, as well as pre-built suites boasting fine finishes and espresso machines. Materials such as walnut, brushed brass and velvet will reflect the tower’s original motifs.
The project is to be completed by years’ end.
JLL’s team off Howard Hersch and Clark Finney, who won the 708 agency four months ago, wouldn’t comment on old leases, but a source said that asking rents until recently averaged in the $50s.
Marx Realty, a division of Merchants’ National Properties, boasts a 4.3-millionsquare-foot portfolio that includes 430 Park Ave, 532 Madison Ave., and the land under 545 Madison. Acclaimed Harlem chef Joseph “JJ” Johnson has landed a new home for his brand of African-inspired cooking. He just signed a lease for Field Trip, a café at 109 Lenox Avenue between West 115th and 116th streets.
Douglas Elliman’s Faith Hope Consolo and Arthur Maglio represented the landlord in the lease for 1,125 square feet on the ground floor and 800 square feet below grade. Hospitality House repped the tenant. Field Trip will be a grain and rice concept from Johnson, former executive chef at Minton’s and The Cecil. According to Consolo, “Field Trip is set to make rice the new ramen.” The rent is $120,000 a year for 10 years.