The bad news about Downtown is well known: 30% of the offices are vacant, Water Street is a near ghost town, and some of the older buildings are at risk of foreclosure. But there's good news, too. And it's not just the World Trade Center and Brookfield Place.
Two large buildings on Liberty Street have weathered the worst of the pandemic, and their owners are putting the finishing touches on them to set them up for continued success.
The first, at 28 Liberty Street, is owned by Fosun Hive Holdings, the real estate arm of Chinese conglomerate Fosun International. Fosun bought the 60-story, 2.5 million-square-foot tower from JPMorgan Chase in 2017 for $750 million and has been thriving ever since, investing an additional $160 million in modernizing it.
The skyscraper, a city landmark, has an office occupancy rate of more than 89 percent and could soon reach the mid-90 percent range once several pending deals are completed, said Thomas Costanzo, CEO of Fosun's global partner and operator of the building, Four Trees Asset Management.
Most of the retail space has also been leased, and Fosun is now focusing on securing the final piece of the puzzle: a roughly 30,000-square-foot multi-purpose events space at the tower's base that the company has dubbed Halo, which can accommodate up to 750 guests.
Costanzo said Haro will complement Union Square Hospitality Manhattan, a restaurant on the tower's top floor that has a thriving events business.
The new ground-floor venue is adjacent to the Tower's famous 2.5-acre plaza, designed around sculptures such as Jean Dubuffet's “Group of Four Trees.”
Costanzo said Haro, which is still partially under construction, is already booked for events including this month's fashion week, but declined to name the designers. Haro is run by Jason Barclay, chief operating officer of Four Trees Capital Management.
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After Chase left, Fosun attracted new tenants including the New York attorney general's office and AIG.
“We basically re-leased the entire building,” Costanzo said.
Asking rents for office space range from the mid-$50s to the mid-$70s per square foot.
The tower's 200,000 square feet of retail space will be home to a 45,000-square-foot, 15-screen Alamo Drafthouse cinema complex, a 20,000-square-foot indoor soccer facility called “Soccer Roof,” and a 13,000-square-foot tennis and pickleball club called “Court 16.”
Fosun International
Halo came to fruition in 2019 when a deal for a 30,000-square-foot food hall fell apart due to the pandemic.
“The decision not to open another food hall was a fortunate one,” Costanzo said, because there are now plenty of fine dining options in the area.
Costanzo was optimistic about the rest of downtown.
“This market has historically had higher vacancy rates than Uptown and has always had issues. Older properties are certainly an issue, but we will see more residential conversions and reuse,” he predicted.
Another success story is One Liberty Plaza: Brookfield Properties' 54-story, 2.3 million-square-foot black steel monolith at the intersection of Broadway and Liberty Street, across from Zuccotti Park, is 83 percent leased to such high-profile tenants as Cleary Gottlieb, Aon, Transatlantic Re, and the New York City Economic Development Corporation.
The skyscraper received a $750 million refinancing package led by Morgan Stanley in June, paving the way for what Brookfield called “significant capital improvements” at the time.
Now Brookfield is beginning an ambitious project to modernize the tower's spacious lobby, a redesign that will boast a new two-story space with 40-foot-high ceilings and 17-foot windows, as well as Italian travertine wall coverings, terrazzo floors, custom furniture by interiors firm Gachot and work by contemporary French artist Pierre Huyghe.
The project, scheduled for completion in early 2026, will be led by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, the original designers of the former U.S. Steel building.
