Downtown NYC, June 2013
By Daniel Geiger – Crain’s
The communications giant will relocate its headquarters to 1095 Sixth Ave. from 140 West St. The company also announced the $274 million sale of the top 21 stories of its downtown tower for residential conversion.
Downtown stalwart Verizon Communications Inc. is leaving its headquarters at 140 West St., the property built 87 years ago to house its predecessor New York Telephone, and moving up to 1095 Sixth Ave., across from Bryant Park. On Wednesday, the communications giant announced that it had sold the upper portion of the 31-story, 1.8 million-square-foot downtown building for $274 million. It will retain 10 floors at the base of the property, where some 600 employees will work.
Magnum Real Estate Group bought the top 21 stories. Investor Ben Shaoul, president of Magnum, plans to convert those floors to residential condominiums.
The sale will require Verizon to relocate about 1,100 employees, most of whom are customer-service representatives, to another property it owns at 395 Flatbush Ave., in Brooklyn. Crain’s first reported that the communications giant was planning to move large numbers of staffers from its West Street home, across Vesey Street from the World Trade Center back in April.
Verizon’s sale of a partial interest in the building is in line with other property sales it has made in recent years, in which it has downsized facilities and raked in millions of dollars from selling off the excess real estate. The company, for instance, sold off a large portion of 375 Pearl St. in 2011 for $120 million. In that deal, it retained just three floors in that 1.1 million-square-foot property, where it condensed telecom operations and equipment that used to take up nearly the entire tower. It also sold off the bulk of 1095 Sixth Ave., the company’s new headquarters property, where it retained seven floors in a condo ownership interest. Verizon stationed its headquarters in that building before selling it off in 2005.
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Also see: Verizon Reaches Agreement on Sale of Portion of Its Historic Building at 140 West St.