Like a present from heaven, the shiny recent church-and-office constructing on Billionaires’ Row that we first told you about two years ago is finally on the rise.
The “boutique” tower at 125 W. 57th St. is soaring toward its 440-foot, 26-story height after it overcame a pair of hellish setbacks.
The project by Ken Horn’s and Brian Ray’s Alchemy-ABR Investment Partners with financial partner Cain International is shown for the primary time on this page.
What is likely to be the town’s most unusual mixed-use project needed a miracle after its construction lender backed out in March 2020 just when Covid-19 was bringing the town to a standstill.
Situated midway between residential supertalls Central Park Tower and 111 W. 57th St. on the north blockfront between Sixth and Seventh avenues, its lower levels can be a larger recent home for Calvary Baptist Church, which owned the property that included the faded Salisbury Hotel for nearly a century.
The tower could have twelve state-of-the-art office floors comprising 180,000 square feet.Neoscape
When the tower designed by architect Dan Kaplan’s team at FX Collaborative is accomplished late next 12 months, it should have twelve state-of-the-art office floors comprising 180,000 square feet. The church below it should enjoy a recent lease on life with expanded space for its congregation and a community center. The complete constructing comprises 260,000 square feet.
Back in 2017, the church agreed to sell its land to the developers for $130 million — a part of the last word $350 million total development cost. As a part of the deal, Alchemy would replace the old house of worship with an expanded recent one.
But the acquisition couldn’t close as scheduled after the lender’s withdrawal. It was born again when Calvary decided to present Alchemy time and suppleness to search out recent financing. Cain tapped one other source and the project went vertical in mid-2021 after the old constructing was demolished.
The “boutique” tower at 125 W. 57th St. will rise 26 stories.Neoscape
Cain will own many of the equity within the office portion of the tower while Calvary will own its floors below. But aren’t offices a Hail Mary in today’s market, when Manhattan availability is at a record near-twenty percent and high rates of interest have squeezed the breath out of firms’ growth plans?
Horn isn’t sweating. “We’ve done thirty residential buildings in the town and we realized this is just not going to be one other residential one,” he said. “We determined in a short time that there was an excessive amount of product in a limited area. But there was a scarcity of latest offices and we’d do well whatever the cycle.”
He added, “Our first office floor is 180 feet within the air over the church and [7,000 square feet of] retail” — guaranteeing open Central Park views. “In most mixed-use projects, it’s the reverse, with offices on lower floors and apartments on top,” Horn noted.
The Calvary Baptist Church at 125 W. 57th St. has won salvation in a difficult real estate market.
Ray said, “We felt that our goal is hedge funds, private equity and different kinds of firms searching for floor plates of around 10,000 square feet, most with private outdoor terraces.”
He added, “This was a really complex deal even before Covid. Our partners fulfilled all the pieces and the Baptist church are righteous people in all the suitable ways.”
Cain head of US real estate Eric Poretsky said, “Our underlying premise was that this was very different from just one other office constructing. We put money into premier locations within the US. We all know that is an irreplaceable piece of real estate.”
The church falls inside the Billionaires Row section of Manhattan.
Of today’s near-paralysis in leasing, Poretsky said, “The query can be vital if we had 1,000,000 and a half square feet,” but a mere 180,000 square feet are a unique story.
“Obviously there are quite a lot of trophy buildings, but now we have park views and 14.5-foot office slab-to-slab floors and two at the highest are 16 feet,” Poretsky said.
Asking rents “will certainly have three digits,” Horn said. A JLL team led by Mitch Konsker has been tapped to search out tenants however the formal marketing campaign won’t start until early next 12 months.
