A $100 million redevelopment is bringing new life — and post-pandemic consideration to staff’ wants and issues — to the enduring Fifties landmark Lever Home on Park Avenue between East 53rd and East 54th streets.
The undertaking’s centerpiece is an indoor-outdoor, tenants-only hospitality suite on the third ground designed to take advantage of market demand for wellness and collaborative-work amenities.
Lever Home joint-venture leaseholders WatermanClark and Brookfield Properties will launch Lever Club, an bold, tenants-only lounge and hospitality venue, contained in the green-glass tower as a part of the redevelopment when the constructing reopens early subsequent 12 months.
WatermanClark co-founder and managing companion Ric Clark mentioned, “Our intention is to help employers’ need to answer their staff within the post-pandemic world. Our redevelopment will create an surroundings the place folks wish to be, with a concentrate on well being, wellness and suppleness.
“The one factor we hear from younger executives is that they don’t wish to be chained to their desks.”
Lever Membership means to handle that difficulty head-on. It should characteristic 15,000 sq. ft of out of doors area in two landscaped terraces located on the constructing’s north and south sides. The terraces are to flank an indoor advanced of 15,000 sq. ft that can embrace a personal restaurant, convention rooms and well being amenities corresponding to coaching rooms and showers.
The third ground was as soon as utilized by authentic proprietor Lever as a hospitality middle — “There are footage of their folks taking part in shuffleboard,” Clark mentioned — however in recent times was used as workplace area. The tower’s present revamping may also embrace a top-to-bottom inside refurbishment and a sophisticated DOAS filtration system to offer 50% extra recent air than in different DOAS-equipped buildings.
Most visibly to the general public, the ground-level plaza beneath the tower — which Clark referred to as “traditionally darkish and dreary in winter” — is being redesigned with new lighting and a brand new ceiling to make it engaging year-round.
Lever Home introduced the Worldwide Type, glass curtain-wall type to Park Avenue two years earlier than the bigger Seagram Constructing did. Architects Skidmore, Owings & Merrill famously crafted a smaller construction than zoning allowed with a mere 260,000 sq. ft on 26 flooring, the tower set perpendicular to the avenue to maximise gentle and views.
Nevertheless it struggled in recent times regardless of its architectural distinction.
Earlier proprietor Aby Rosen’s RFR Realty undertook a modest modernization program in 2000. However Rosen fell behind on ground-lease payments to the land-owning Korein household and turned the keys over to WatermanClark and Brookfield in 2020.
The brand new house owners took full management in 2020 — “The lease is extraordinarily long-term and it shouldn’t be an issue for us,” Clark mentioned. Metropolis Finance Division information listing the leasehold buy at $240 million.
“There have been solely 4 or 5 tenants once we took over in 2020. We labored with them to facilitate their leaving. An empty constructing isn’t scary for us. It offers us the chance to do what we’re doing, which we couldn’t’ do in a constructing filled with tenants,” Clark mentioned.
Lever Home, with flooring of solely 11,000 sq. ft every, is an anomaly — primarily a boutique property in a Park Avenue market of large ground plates. Clark mentioned the setup “creates a fairly uncommon Manhattan alternative for a single tenant, however we’ll extra possible lease to a number of tenants taking one or two flooring. There are way more 11,000 or 22,000 square-foot customers out there than there are for 260,000 sq. ft.”
The constructing’s reopening comes during a Park Avenue resurgence after a couple of years of relative decline.
“The East Midtown rezoning “totally changed the complexion of Park Avenue,” Clark mentioned. Along with JP Morgan Chase’s rising new headquarters tower, properties within the East 40s and 50s have been touchdown massive new leases as house owners pump tons of of thousands and thousands of {dollars} into contemporizing buildings constructed within the Fifties and Sixties.
Clark declined to quote asking rents for Lever Home. However market sources mentioned the possible goal is for triple-digit rents within the $200 per-square-foot vary. A CBRE workforce has been tapped to sift affords.
