NEW YORK CITY—BNY Mellon executives on Tuesday said the investment bank plans to sell its headquarters building at One Wall Street. First reported as a possibility this past December, the sale of the 52-story Art Deco office tower would be complemented by a search for new headquarters space, possibly in Jersey City, where the bank already has office space. A CBRE spokesman confirms that his company has been hired to market the 1.2-million-square-foot property.
“We're reducing our real estate footprint” as part of a move to control costs, BNY Mellon CEO Gerald Hassell said on a quarterly earnings conference call Tuesday. The bank would shrink its New York City office space by a net 700,000 square feet following a sale and relocation.
Bloomberg reported this past December that the bank was considering shifting its headquarters to 101 Barclay St., which it also owns. BNY Mellon occupies 24 of the 1.2-million-square-foot property's 25 floors.
Citing an unnamed source, Bloomberg reported that the bank would seek about 400,000 square feet—whether in Lower Manhattan or Jersey City—to house some of the 1,100 employees who currently work at One Wall, and that it had tapped JLL to find space. A JLL spokesman did not return GlobeSt.com's calls by deadline Wednesday.
BNY Mellon would also lease back some of the One Wall space for a short time following the sale, the Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday. It plans to complete a sale by the end of the third quarter.
Thomas Gibbons, the bank's CFO, told the WSJ that “we expect to get a very strong bid” for the property. The most recent Financial District office tower deal, the $157-million sale of 55 Broadway to a joint venture led by Harbor Group International, went for $438 per square foot, according tio Real Capital Analytics.
In common with another Art Deco office tower in the Financial District—70 Pine St., which also dates from 1931—one possible use for One Wall post-BNY Mellon would be residential. The New York Times reported in January that the property would “probably be converted to apartments by a new owner.”
The bank and its predecessor have been based on Wall Street since 1784, when Alexander Hamilton founded the Bank of New York. It's been headquartered at One Wall, formerly the Irving Trust Co. Building, since 1998, when it acquired the Irving Bank Co.
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