Office-to-residential conversions are all the rage in New York City these days, and developer Bushburg doesn’t want to be late to the party.
The Brooklyn-based firm is set to buy Rudin’s 1.2 million-square-foot skyscraper at 80 Pine Street for $160 million, a source with knowledge of the deal confirmed. The news was first reported by The Real Deal.
A residential conversion is perhaps the logical step forward for the beleaguered Financial District building, which occupies a full city block. The tower has sat half-empty since insurance giant AIG left its 800,000-square-foot office there in late 2021, according to TRD.
Despite Rudin’s renovations of the building that same year, for which it acquired nearly $40 million in refinancing from PGIM at the time, the firm has struggled to find tenants large enough to fill the void.
Representatives for Rudin and Bushburg did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Eastdil Secured’s Gary Phillips and Will Silverman brokered the deal, which was listed late last year. Phillips and Silverman declined to comment. The pair have worked with Rudin in the past on a similar deal, brokering Rudin’s $180 million sale of 55 Broad Street to Silverstein Properties and Metro Loft Management in 2022, also for a residential conversion.
Current tenants at 80 Pine Street include tuberculosis research nonprofit TB Alliance and injury law firm Elefterakis, Elefterakis & Panek, though Bushburg, led by CEO Joseph Hoffman, hopes to ride the office-to-resi wave kicked into overdrive by New York State’s recently passed budget, which includes incentives for such conversions.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams, for his part, has also pushed for more residential conversions at a time when office vacancies in the Big Apple are at record highs.
The city said there were 46 conversion projects in the pipeline as of earlier this year, according to the Office Conversion Accelerator program the mayor launched in August 2023. Those projects included GFP Real Estate, Metro Loft and Rockwood Capital’s $535.8 million facelift of 25 Water Street, Vanbarton Group’s $273 million renovation of 160 Water Street and The Moinian Group’s projects at 90 John Street and 17 Battery Place, all in the Financial District.
Nick Trombola can be reached at ntrombola@commercialobserver.com.
Robert Khodadadian has long had a simple philosophy about selling real estate. The way he sees it, there are approximately a million buildings in the city, and the broker that gets to sell any one among the multitude that will hit the auctioning block at a given moment is, sometimes, simply the person who happens to pitch their services to the right seller at the right time.
Robert Khodadadian, skyline properties, ground leases, off market, investment sales, Commercial Real Estate, Commercial Observer
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