It took longer than anyone expected, but the Moinian Group’s boutique office project called the Hudson Arts Building is at last beginning to rise.
Ground was broken on the 200,000-square-foot, 10-story tower at 220 Eleventh Ave. at West 26th Street in the anxious days of February 2020. But work paused once the pandemic took lethal hold in the terrible weeks that followed.
Now, a JLL team of Cynthia Wasserberger, Peter Riguardi, Frank Doyle and Michael Pallas are ready to market the project, which should open for tenant buildouts in the first quarter of 2024. It’s one of a handful of entirely speculative buildings — meaning without pre-signed tenants — to go up since the coronavirus arrived.
“Our tenants won’t all necessarily be arts-related,” Wasserberger said. “They’ll likely also be fintech, media and financial services.” But the building “will have a lot of art in it,” appropriate to the neighborhood that’s home to the Gagosian, Pace and other premier galleries.
The Hudson Arts project aims to exploit the West Chelsea neighborhood’s ongoing resurgence. It’s close by the massive Terminal Stores warehouse-to-offices conversion site in which L&L Holding Company is a partner. Other neighbors include the born-again XI condo towers that were recently rescued from foreclosure by Steven Witkoff and Len Blavatnik.
It’s also across the street from the leviathan-scale Starrett-Lehigh Building, where famed chef Marcus Samuelsson is launching a new, full-block restaurant.
As at the other spec office buildings now underway, owners Joseph and Mitchell Moinian are aiming high on rents — $200-plus per square foot for the penthouse floor and in the low-mid $150s for lower floors.
The structure will have a 12,000-square-foot roof deck and terraces on several tenant floors — more than 15,000 square feet of outdoor space in all. It boasts ceiling heights up to 17 feet and tenant amenities including a lounge, fitness area and even a dog park.
The Moinians are also part of a joint venture with Boston Properties to build a nearly 2-million-square-foot office skyscraper known as 3 Hudson Boulevard in the Hudson Yards district — but that project won’t go up until an anchor tenant is signed.
The redesign and repositioning of 80 Pine St. has begun to pay off. Rudin Management has completed five new leases and expansions at the 1.2-million-square-foot tower that the Rudin family developed in the late 1950s. The deals total more than 100,000 square feet — the first chunk of about 800,000 square feet that became available when former tenant AIG moved out.
In the largest transaction, the National Urban League converted a 57,245-square-foot sublease on the ninth floor to a 3.5-year direct lease.
Three new tenants are coming to the building: New York Property Insurance Underwriting Association, AccuWeather and health information systems provider CureMD. Meanwhile, media analytics firm January Digital expanded its space at the address.
The deals follow completion of the capital improvement program’s first phase, which included a redesign of the ground floor entrances and lobby by Fogarty Finger Architecture. The next phase will see construction of an interconnected indoor-outdoor amenity center on the 22nd and 23rd floors.
Asking rents were in the mid-high $50s per square foot.
Global Management Group’s 99 Park Ave. has signed three new leases totaling 65,428 square feet. The new tenants are Garan, a Berkshire Hathaway subsidiary; AKAM Associates, a residential property management company; and CardWorks, the parent company of Merrick Bank.
JLL represented the landlord in all the transactions.
