Tishman Speyer Develops Enormous Creative Offices Under 99-Year Ground Lease

NEW YORK CITY- Tishman Speyer is developing 630,000-square-feet of creative offices under a 99-year ground lease agreement with the United States Postal Service in the Morgan North Postal Facility in Manhattan’s West Chelsea district.

In the definitive agreement, Tishman will renovate the top six floors of the 10-story art deco building that takes a full city block from Ninth to Tenth Avenue and 29th to 30th Streets. Also, Tishman will build out 5,100 square feet of street-level retail on Ninth Avenue. Construction is dated to start in late 2020, with completion anticipated in mid-2022.

Built in 1933, the Morgan North building features floor plates of an estimated 200,000 square feet each. With the renovation, it will become one of five Manhattan office buildings with gigantic floors of that size. Ceiling heights are up to 17 feet. The building will feature a large private roof deck, reserved exclusively for Tishman’s prospective office tenants.

USPS will continue to operate in the bottom four floors of the building that is connected by a bridge to the Postal Service’s Morgan South facility across at 29th Street. The entire two-block complex totals  2.2 million square feet and is one of the largest mail-processing facilities in the country.

Office tenants will have three dedicated lobbies and elevator banks, accessible on Ninth Avenue, 30th Street and Tenth Avenue. Prospective tenants will have access from the 78,000-square-foot seventh floor to a 2.5-acre roof deck programmed for a range of outdoor uses and an eighth-floor terrace and a rooftop amenity space.

Tishman has been busy in the submarket. Several blocks north of the Morgan North building, is its second major development project, dubbed The Spiral, a 65-story, 2.8 million square foot office tower that will count Pfizer and AllianceBernstein as anchor tenants.