The beleaguered Financial District’s best hope — and its owner’s biggest challenge — is 60 Wall St., a vacant, 1.6 million-square-foot tower where Paramount Group has launched a marketing and leasing campaign as it completes a $250 million renovation.
Developed for JPMorgan in the 1980s, the 47-storey tower was until recently owned by Deutsche Bank, before being sold to Singapore sovereign wealth fund GIC and Paramount for $1.04 billion in 2017. Paramount only has a 5% stake but is struggling as the tower’s real estate manager and asset manager.
It’s a bold move for Manhattan-based Paramount, which has office vacancy rates of 27% on the East Side and 34% on the West Side, according to Cushman & Wakefield. (The data doesn’t include the World Trade Center district.)
Other FiDi buildings are also competing for big tenants, but most of the attention has been on 60 Wall (surprisingly, none of the analysts on Paramount’s second-quarter earnings call mentioned the topic).
But one normally well-spoken broker, who is not involved with the building and asked not to be named, told us, “Downtown will sink or swim depending on whether Paramount signs a tenant. Even one big lease will change the perception of the downtown office market.”
Paramount Group, led by CEO and President Albert Boehler, is one of the few companies with the muscle to take on the 60 Wall. The company’s 13.8 million square foot global portfolio is mostly in Manhattan, including properties such as 1301 and 1325 Sixth Avenue, 712 Fifth Avenue, and 1633 Broadway, home to the popular Taiwanese restaurant Din Tai Fung.
Paramount is touting 60 Wall as “not the Wall Street you know,” and a recent tour with executive vice president and head of real estate Peter Brindley revealed nearly column-free office floors, 13- to 16-foot ceiling heights and commanding views previously known only to employees of the previous tenant, who occupied the entire building.
Above the podium level, the “re-envisioned” tower largely resembles the original Kevin Roche/John Dinkeloo design, combining neoclassical and postmodern elements. But below that, it’s a completely different story.
A symbol of late 1980s excess, the original lobby was likened by critic Paul Goldberger to “an ice cream parlor scaled to monumental proportions.” Now, the Privately Owned Public Space (POPS) between Wall and Pine Streets is being transformed into an inviting three-story atrium with a skylight that penetrates the tower’s base and a lush, 100-foot-tall “green wall.”
New three-storey-high windows on the former trading floor let in plenty of light, and a grand staircase and elevator connect to metro lines 2 and 3 below.
30,000 square feet of tenant amenity space will be installed above it. Terraces will be added to several office floors. An enhanced ventilation system with virus-blocking MERV 15 filters is one of the abundant examples of infrastructure and sustainability upgrades.
A strong point of 60 Wall is that 11 subway lines are located either directly below or just a few blocks away, giving the building’s employees easy access to the Hudson and East River waterfronts, numerous restaurants, the revitalized South Street Seaport, shopping options ranging from discounter Century 21 to Paris-born luxury store Printemps, which opens next year, as well as Brookfield Place and the WTC Oculus.
Still, the leasing campaign led by CBRE may face challenges: Despite rumors of American Express, there are no reports of any major companies signing leases anywhere downtown.
But leasing is on the rise: 321,000 square feet were leased in May, the second time 2024 has exceeded the five-year monthly average, according to CBRE. Year-to-date leasing has reached 1.02 million square feet, up 26% over 2023.
“Tenant demand continues to improve, with demand focused on the highest quality, best located properties,” said Brindley. “60 Wall Street has been designed ahead of its time, incorporating elements of today’s new builds, including high ceilings, near-column-free spaces, robust infrastructure and incredible views.”
“Our investment will provide a market-leading tenant experience in a building that is easily accessible from all areas of the city and region.”
Paramount is “selling and buying multiple users for over 200,000 square feet each,” Brindley said. Asking rents are between $70 and $90 per square foot.
