One Cour t Where?

Citi consolidation opens a million square feet

TOWERING

53 stories over the Long Island City waterfront, One Court Square has long been the city’s least accessible office skyscraper. But after 30 years as mostly a home to Citigroup, the greenglass giant is stepping out to swing.

The landlord, Savanna, is offering 1 million square feet of high-floors space as the bank reduces its footprint at the 1.4-millionsquare-foot address to just 400,000 square feet. It’s one of the largest single-address departures in recent years, even more significant than the planned shrinkage of AllianceBernstein at 1345 Sixth Ave. Citigroup’s leases on the upper 31 floors expire in June 2020.

Savanna also plans to transform One Court Square’s underused “retail annex” into a bustling, glass-wrapped atrium, including a 17,000-squarefoot food hall, which will draw visitors from the neighborhood as well as from the office floors.

The availability of space comes as part of Citigroup’s methodical consolidation of space. A bank rep declined to discuss specifics but noted its 2015 headquarters move from 399 Park Ave., where it left behind 350,000 square feet, to 388 and 390 Greenwich St. downtown.

Savanna’s offering marks the first time the iconic One Court Square tower — crowned by the brightly lit, red “Citi” sign visible from afar — has been on the open market except for a few subleases.

“We’re excited to introduce this asset to the market,” said Brian Reiver, an executive at Savanna. “Many folks have never been inside. We also think we can create a ‘main and main’ [retail mecca] at the centerpoint of Long Island City.

“We sit on top of a subway station with four different lines — the E, M, G and No. 7 — and we have 133,000 square feet of retail to amenitize the tower and support the neighborhood,” Reiver said.

The office space is being marketed by a JLL team led by Mitchell Konsker and including Matthew Astrachan, Michael Berg, Dan Turkewitz and Clark Finney. Winick is handling retail leasing.

Konsker said the office space is asking $55 to $65 per square foot. But several as-of-right tenant incentives “can reduce annual occupancy cost by up to $25 per square foot,” Konsker said.

The city’s Relocation and Employment Assistance Program (REAP), which was recently extended to June 30, 2020, can alone save a tenant up to $20 per square foot in the form of business income tax credits for relocating jobs from outside the city or from below 96th Street in Manhattan to designated outer borough locations.

Although booming Long Island City has seen resi- dential development far outpace commercial, One Court Square won’t be without challengers. Tishman Speyer’s doubletowered The Jacx nearby will have 1.2 million square feet of freshly minted office space when it’s completed in 2019, although more than 70 percent is pre-leased to WeWork and Macy’s/Bloomingdale’s.

Won’t The Jacx, built ground-up and brimming with 21st-century infrastructure, pose competition? “We do think we compete with it, but in the sense that ours is a trophycaliber asset as well,” Reiver said. “One Court Square is still of a caliber that competes with new construction.”

Realty Check was long curious about the inside of the largely off-limits tower — as are millions who eye it from East 53rd Street across the river or from the LIE or elevated subway lines.

We never knew the Court Square subway station had connections di- rectly into the lobby. A walk-through of the tower found a surprisingly up-todate look. “It’s no different than any brand-new product,” Konsker said.

“It has column-free, 33,000-square-foot floorplates with full-height floorto-ceiling glass” — affording unobstructed, eyepopping views in all directions.

Konsker said that because the tower was built by the bank for its own use, and has been occupied by it since the opening, “all the technology — A/C, backup generation, all the systems — have been kept up to date.”

One Court Square was originally meant to spearhead a Long Island City office boom that never came. Instead, the Queens neighborhood has added more apartments since 2010 than any other neighborhood in the US. More than 8,000 mostly rental apartments have been built there since 2006 with 25,000 more coming in the next few years.

But although blessed with cultural landmarks such as MoMA PS1 and Silvercup Studios, neighborhood retail has lagged. One Court Square’s retail annex was built in the late 1980s, when new corporate offices looked inward with amenities for tenants. But the redesigned atrium by Gensler architects will boast five levels of food, fitness and lifestyle tenants meant to draw Long Island City’s mushrooming community, as well as a conference center. A spiral staircase will link all the levels.

Savanna, led by managing partners Christopher Schlank and Nicholas Bienstock, acquired the controlling interest in the tower in 2014. Among other city holdings, Savanna recently purchased 5 Bryant Park from Blackstone Group for $640 million.