NEW YORK CITY-In response to large corporate expansions and a slew of major projects currently underway in Lower Manhattan, a provider of conference centers is expanding its footprint beyond Midtown to Downtown. Sentry Centers LLC – a company with two locations at 730 Third Ave. and 810 Seventh Ave. – is establishing its third and newest facility at 32 Old Slip in the Financial District, a building managed by Beacon Capital Partners.
“We really make a lot of our real estate decision-making as it relates to locations based on Fortune 500 corporate density,” Ryan Simonetti, co-founder of Sentry Centers, tells GlobeSt.com. “Outside of Midtown, that area of Downtown still has the greatest density of these types of large corporations. A lot of these customers that we are serving Downtown are customers that we have been already serving in Midtown, like Deutsche Bank and Oppenheimer. They’ve already been clients of ours in Midtown and we really saw an opportunity to continue to build the network be able to accommodate them Downtown.”
The space, totaling 38,750 square feet, formerly served at the training facility for Goldman Sachs. It will opening in December 2012 following a $3.6 million renovation with 11 rooms to accommodate 275 people.
Simonetti said Sentry will be working with local groups such as the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and the Downtown Alliance on promoting the center to the business community as soon as the renovations roll out. “From a location standpoint, it is very accessible from all forms of transportation,” he says, noting that the space is one block from Water Street and steps away from Wall Street, close to hundreds of financial services firms, professional service tenants and media companies. “Not only do you have the seaport right there, but you have multiple subway stops in a very short walk. It was basically already built out as a conference center for Goldman Sachs, so there was a lot of existing salvage value to the installation that they were able to recapture. It really made it very compelling financially for us.”
Christopher Kelly, principal at Sentry Centers, says in a statement that decision was driven by feedback from meeting planners and downtown business owners who expressed an unmet need for quality conference space in the Financial District. “Based on their demand and the general growth in that market, we have great expectations for the site and look forward to contributing our services for the benefit of the local business community,” he says. In addition, Sentry is planning to open additional sites in New York, Washington, DC and Boston come 2013.
CBRE’s Jared Freede, senior associate; Rocco Laginestra, senior vice president; Michael Wellen, senior vice president, and Rob Wizenberg, senior associate, represented Sentry Centers on the deal. The firm’s Robert Alexander, chairman; Doug Lehman, senior vice president; David Maurer-Hollaender, vice chairman; Bruce Surry, executive vice president, and Munish Viralam, senior associate, represented Beacon.
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