Riding ‘COTE’ tails
Star chef’s firm brings A-game to 550 Mad.
OLAYAN Group, which has widely touted new amenities it’s brought to redesigned office landmark 550 Madison Avenue, just landed its most impressive — and surprising — amenity of all.
Restaurant company Gracious Hospitality Management, founded by Simon Kim — the creator of Michelin-starred Korean steakhouse COTE on West 22nd Street — just struck a deal for a 15,000-squarefoot, “multi-faceted” dining concept on the tower’s three lowest levels.
The restaurant, potentially a Midtown game-changer, will boast 60-foot ceilings and windows overlooking Madison Avenue. It will have direct access from the ground floor to the tower’s new, elaborately landscaped, half-acre arcade garden.
Olayan America real estate chief Erik Horvat said, “The iconic design of 550 Madison offers the ideal location for Simon to share his newest vision.”
Gracious Hospitality and Olayan “will begin the design phase immediately to bring the team’s vision to life,” the partners told Realty Check.
However, the name, culinary style and design for the new vision have yet to be decided. Korean or not, any type of Asian cuisine would set the place apart from the American and European menus at other new or redesigned Midtown office towers.
When Kim launched COTE in 2017, its unique marriage of Korean barbecue and American steakhouse styles immediately made it one of Manhattan’s hottest restaurants — a status it still holds.
Kim’s arrival is the latest by a top-tier chef at a prominent new office tower. Daniel Boulud launched Le Pavillon at One Vanderbilt and will later bring a huge steakhouse to One Madison; JeanGeorges Vongerichten plans a large eatery at 425 Park Ave.; and Avra recently bowed a huge Greek seafood restaurant at redesigned 1271 Sixth Ave.
Such deals burnish the towers’ images for tenants and the public. Many are hybrid arrangements that include elements of traditional leases combined with landlord-restaurant revenue-sharing formulas.
It wasn’t known, however, how
Kim’s contract at 550 Madison is structured.
It comes at a critical time for the tower, which Olayan purchased for $1.4 billion in 2016 and spent $300 million more to redesign the retail spaces and lower-level facades, and to create the new public garden.
Its 750,000 square feet of offices are 50% leased, led by Chubb’s 240,000-squarefoot commitment and smaller ones for Hermes and Corsair Capital. Some floors command rents close to $200 per square foot.
THAT STILL leaves nearly half of 750,000 square feet to lease at a time when some companies are downsizing and others are taking a hard look at their space needs.
But a restaurant by Kim adds a “cool factor” that can only help draw more cutting-edge tenants.
Times Square snag
The Deuce is losing its juice. In the latest setback to the gaily-lit block of West 42nd Street between Seventh and Eighth avenues, construction has ground to a halt at the landmarked, longdark Times Square Theater, which is being redesigned and expanded for retail or entertainment use.
The project by Stillman Development International isn’t dead; it’s only hit the pause button. But the delay could augur yet another disappointment at the colonnaded, limestone-facade venue that served as a live playhouse and cinema for most of its 102 years.
Elsewhere on the block, meanwhile, large storefronts formerly home to BB King’s Blues Club & Grill and the city’s largest McDonald’s stand empty. Crowds still come for “The Lion King” and for Madame Tussauds, but numerous other storefronts remain up for lease.
Stillman and the nonprofit New 42nd Street, which oversees the block’s historic theaters, announced the latest plan at the jinxed site at 215 W. 42nd St. nearly five years ago.
But as in many similar premature victory boasts, it turns out that completing the redesign widely shown in the press first depends on finding a tenant before major construction can be completed.
The Times Square Theater is supposed to have two additional floors on top and a dramatic glass box cantilevered over the 42nd Street sidewalk.
Powerhouse Colliers broker Bradley Mendelson, who previously lured several major tenants to the site only to see them back out of leases, acknowledged what we suspected from our walk-by observations.
“Work will commence as soon as we have a tenant,” Mendelson said. “They don’t want to do anything that might need to be undone.”
He emphasized, “Stillman is still in the deal.”
Completing the job would take another year once a tenant signs on and spells out its requirements, he said.
An online post reads the “restored, historically significant building” will have 41,500 square feet of “dynamic multi-level retail/entertainment/restaurant/ space,” “tremendous glass exposure,” and an outdoor terrace on the fourth floor.
A lease — technically a sublease — is available for 15 years or more.
We reported in June 2019 that according to city Department of Finance Records, Stillman and its partner, South Korea’s Daishin Securities, are paying rent of $15.8 million for 73 years, including two renewal options.
Previous would-be rescuers included designer Marc Ecko, who walked away from a lease after five years of doing nothing with the space, and a dubious enterprise called Broadway 4D, which was supposed to be a musical attraction helmed by top Hollywood power players.