60 Wall needs love

CBRE to seek tenants on Deustche Bank exit

THE owners of 60 Wall St. have tapped CBRE to market the tower’s 1.7 million square feet of office space once Deutsche Bank moves out, sources said — a pivotal moment in the 30-year-old tower’s history.

The CBRE assignment, which followed what an insider termed a “fierce” competition among major brokerages, has implications for all of downtown. First and foremost, it means that owners GIC of Singapore (95 percent) and Paramount Group (5 percent with management responsibility) have faith in downtown’s office market, which continues to lose financial services tenants to uptown.

Deutsche Bank will soon move to Time Warner Center, which will be renamed Deutsche Bank Center. The owners of 60 Wall haven’t discussed plans for the tower’s future. That’s prompted speculation that it might be converted to residential — which seemed unlikely but not impossible given that the former AIG tower across the street was made into rental apartments.

CBRE declined to confirm that it’s gotten the nod for 60 Wall St. A Paramount Group rep said the firm “respectfully declines to comment.”

Sources noted that the contract

for 60 Wall wasn’t yet signed. They also said that the CBRE team would be led by Howard Fiddle and Paul Amrich, who have had a strong relationship with Paramount at 1633 Broadway.

The floors at 60 Wall can’t be delivered until 2021 or 2022. “The building is only 30 years old, but it needs tons of work,” an insider said.

Any internal redesign will likely be attuned to FiDi’s new generation of tenants — media, creative and tech firms that have made up for the loss of traditional Wall Street financial services users.

They’ve kept downtown’s office market healthy. Cushman & Wakefield reported “robust” leasing in the first quarter and overall vacancy of 11.2 percent, compared with 10.2 percent in Midtown. The Downtown Alliance found that private sector jobs grew to 251,224, greater than the pre-9/11 level.

But 60 Wall’s mechanical systems and electronic infrastructure, which were designed for 1987 trading floors, need to be made digitally suitable for the 21st century. The huge public lobby (right) between Wall and Pine streets also needs a redesign. Regarded as a generous amenity in the 1980s, it’s underutilized today even with an indoor subway entrance. White columns and ceiling lattices are weird for the eyes.

The tower was originally built for JPMorgan. The postmodern design by architecture firm Kevin Roche John Dinkeloo and Associates included vaguely Greek-revival column motifs — and also tried to make the entire, 52-story structure resemble one giant classical column.

Deutsche bought it from JPMorgan in December 2001 — a deal that had gone into contract three months before 9/11. The contract didn’t leave Deutsche much choice but to go through with the purchase or forfeit a $40 million deposit.

Even so, the German bank’s decision to close on the deal when much of downtown remained an ash-covered zone with a mass grave just blocks away was considered a brave vote of confidence in the district’s future. It’s easy to forget that, at the time, no rebuilding plan for the World Trade Center was remotely in sight. “Experts” in and outside the real estate industry predicted that Lower Manhattan was finished as a commercial district. But Deutsche was vindicated as downtown slowly recovered. It sold 60 Wall to Paramount in 2007 for $1.2 billion in a deal that came with a 15-year leaseback. In 2017, GIC bought a 95 percent stake while Paramount continued to manage the property.