The NYC office market was full of surprises — both good and bad — in 2024

FROM GERMANY, WITH LOVE. Munich Re, which isn’t in the real estate business, pumped $1 billion into Big Apple real estate this year. The world’s largest reinsurance company dipped into petty cash to pay off a $500 million Wells Fargo mortgage at 330 Madison Avenue. A few months later, it spent $500 million more to buy out Mutual of America, its partner in 320 Park Avenue, making  Munich Re the fully-leased tower’s sole owner.

LET THEM EAT EVERYTHING. SL Green, the city’s largest commercial landlord, is also its hungriest.  Daniel Boulud’s spectacular steakhouse La Tete D’Or opened this month at SLG’s  One Madison. So did Armani Ristorante at the developer’s just-opened 760 Madison Ave.  In 2025, a new Carnegie Diner and a high-end Greek eatery will open at 1185 Sixth Ave. They follow Eleven Madison Park, Fasano and Le Pavillon, all in SL Green buildings.FUTURE MUSINGS. Will Macy’s in Brooklyn soon belong to the borough’s memories like the Dodgers? Albert Laboz, leader of a group that bought the store’s Fulton Street building for a rock-bottom $23 million, said he envisioned making it a home for “experiential entertainment retail.” Macy’s said it hadn’t made up its mind whether to close the store. That’s what Walter O’Malley said   before he moved the Dodgers to Chavez Ravine.

OFFICES REDUX. Confounding predictions that work-from-home and high interest rates would kill  the market for good, Manhattan’s best buildings  have so little space available —  and so much demand for it — that  tenants can’t find room to move or expand. On Park and Sixth avenues, at the World Trade Center, Brookfield Place, Hudson Yards, Manhattan West, One Vanderbilt, One Bryant Park and  other top-tier towers, vacancy is between zero and 10%. (No more statistics, we promise!)

REPOSITION THIS.  Class A-plus versus all other classes isn’t the only  divide in office property values. It’s  also between owners able to afford megabucks “repositionings” and those who can’t.

It’s year-end look-back time, folks. But rather than put you to sleep with statistics, we’ll share a bunch of our favorite fun facts and phenomena from the ever-entertaining world of commercial real estate.

It’s a different, sad story at the Waldorf-Astoria, which China’s Anbang insurance bought  from Hilton in 2014. After another Chinese company, Daija, took it over when Anbang collapsed, the iconic hotel has yet to reopen after nearly a decade of bungled construction. Hilton says wait until spring.

At 295 Fifth Ave., a $350 million redesign by Tribeca Investment Group,  PGIM Real Estate and Meadow Partners helped to lure hedge fund Bridgewater Associates for its first Manhattan office.  Paramount Group  is spending more than a quarter-million dollars to revitalize  vacant 60 Wall Street with  a new, podium-level facade and  public spaces. The  trend   includes buildings as diverse as Lever House, 1290 Sixth Ave.,  Penn 2,  10 Grand Central  and   the Seagram Building.

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