Owner Offers to Spend Almost $300,000 on Modifications for $39 per SF Space

NEW YORK CITY-In a city known for being skeptical of any deal that sounds too good to be true, GlobeSt.com asked senior director Douglas Grabiner of GVA Williams why space in the Grand Central District was marked at only $39 per sf. Asking prices in this section of the city usually start at least at $50 per sf, driven up by the recently overheated marketplace. The owner, Goodstein Management, is also willing to spend $30 per sf on approximately 10,000 sf of space to modify it for the tenants.

Grabiner notes the building, 211 East 46th St. “isn’t prime” space. It’s a five-story annex to L’Ecole, a “30-something-story” residential building on East 47th Street with a separate entrance from the office building. While its status as an annex has kept the owner from asking more, Grabiner notes this is “Midtown Manhattan’s most aggressively marketed” space because of the pricing and the willingness to spend “so much” on modifications.

“It’s very difficult to find a leasing transaction for Midtown North, north of 42nd Street, for less than $50 per sf. The real thrust of this is that you might find a deal this good in the Garment Center, but those addresses aren’t as prestigious as here,” he observes. “It is not common at this rent level to see this sizeable an allocation for changes to the space for a potential tenant.”