Super-tall tower could replace former home of lowly bar
World Wide Group is selling six buildings across the street from Bloomingdale’s. The new owner can raze the properties and build a 1,000-foot-tall residential tower.
Super tall tower – An ultra-pricey, tall residential tower could soon sprout across the street from Bloomingdale’s.
Real estate investment firm World Wide Group has put a collection of six, low-rise buildings near the corner of East 60th Street and Lexington Avenue on the market for sale. One of the properties was the longtime home of famed dive bar Subway Inn, which recently relocated. The site can accommodate a roughly 280,000-square-foot tower that could potentially rise as high as 1,000 feet. If a developer opts to include affordable housing, the square footage and height of the building would be permitted to increase by up to 20% more.
World Wide purchased the buildings one by one during the past decade. It has hired a team from Cushman & Wakefield—led by Bob Knakal, Cushman’s chairman of New York investment sales, and brokers Clint Olsen and Helen Hwang—to handle the deal. The site could be worth $300 million or more, a price that would make it one of the city’s most expensive ever sold per square foot.
Spanning six contiguous buildings from 143 E. 60th St. to 161 E. 60th St., the development site is across the street from Bloomingdale’s flagship department store and near a bustling shopping corridor on Lexington Avenue. Part of the site’s value is the 200 feet of frontage along East 60th Street that would allow a builder to create significant retail space.
If a tower is erected on the site, it would be one of few to reach the heavens on the far east side of midtown. Several 1,000-foot-plus developments are already underway farther west, just south of Central Park.
The site sale is one of the latest large assignments that is being handled by Mr. Knakal since he sold the brokerage firm he co-founded, Massey Knakal, to Cushman earlier this year. Mr. Knakal was tapped to handle the sale of 1 Court Square, the soaring office building in Long Island City, Queens, that is asking more than $500 million.
Photo: PropertyShark.com
