GIANT J.P. Morgan Chase, shrinking its Manhattan real estate portfolio in the wake of its merger with Bank One, is selling off one of its most prestigious buildings.
J.P. Morgan Chase is under contract to sell 522 Fifth Ave., the 575,000-square-foot home of its asset management division, to Stellar Management and partner Rockpoint Group for an undisclosed price.
The “off-market” transaction was negotiated without brokers, but Greenberg Traurig attorney Rob Ivanhoe, who represented Stellar, is credited with being “instrumental.”
The 23-story tower between 43rd-44th streets will become vacant next summer. Employees will move to 245 Park Ave. and eat up much of the 712,000 feet J.P. Morgan recently put up for sublease there.
When 522 Fifth becomes vacant, the plum leasing assignment will fall to Cushman & Wakefield, where Mitchell Konsker will direct the marketing along with Matthew Astrachan, Alexander Chudnoff and Adam Goldenberg. The 1960 structure is known for state-of-the-art infrastructure.
Konsker called Stellar Management’s timing “excellent,” adding, “As the availability of Class-A space in Midtown continues to tighten, the opportunity to lease an entire building of this size is virtually unheard of.” He expects rents between $70-75 a square foot.
Stellar co-principal Robert Rosania said the deal “enables J.P. Morgan to consolidate its space and increase its efficiency while allowing us to gain full control of the building’s enormous leasing potential.”
The land under 522 Fifth was formerly owned by 24 different parties – a complicating factor first reported by The Post’s Lois Weiss in 2003. Last year, Stellar bought the land for $53 million.
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The folks who live and work near Second Avenue and 57th Street are due to get a large, new neighbor.
The site of two schools on the southwest corner has been put up for sale by the city’s Educational Construction Fund, an agency controlled by the mayor’s office to facilitate school development through the sale of air rights.
What’s on the block is a 75-year leasehold on the 62,000-square-foot site’s unused development rights.
It can support a residential tower above the schools of at least 420,000 square feet as of now, with the possibility of 125,000 square feet more under certain conditions.
The corner is home to both the low-slung High School of Art & Design and PS 59. The ECF has tapped CB Richard Ellis’s Darcy Stacom and Paul Leibowitz to sift offers.
Stacom said the site’s location and size “create a phenomenal opportunity.”
She would not speculate on price. Sources said a sale of the land – as opposed to a leasehold – would likely draw offers around $150 million.
The news comes on the heels of an agreement Stacom recently negotiated for ECF to sell the leasehold above a vacant school at 1765 First Ave. to the DeMatteis Organization and the Mattone Group. They can put up an apartment tower of 150,000 square feet.
The ECF was active in the 1970s but fell quiet after that. But Mayor Bloomberg‘s capital plan “says we should aggressively leverage the system’s air rights, and we are strategically putting them out,” ECF executive director Jamie Smarr said.