NEW YORK CITY-Harlem might seem like the most unlikely of office locations, but the Taystee Building, a new tower being built in the area, promises to include some sweeteners that could lure companies and non-profit organizations uptown. In this UPDATE to an earlier story, an executive with exclusive leasing agent Cushman & Wakefield discusses the tower's virtues.
Once the site of the Taystee Bakery, the Taystee Building is being converted to a 300,000-square-foot office tower that will be completed next year. Some unique elements to the building's location, as well as its design, provide a compelling value proposition, C&W senior managing director Jonathan Fales tells GlobeSt.com.
Being in Harlem, "The Taystee Building will trade at a discount to office space in Midtown," he notes. "Asking rents will be in the high $40s to low $50s range. Also, there hasn't been a building built in the area that isn't owner-occupied, and this will be Harlem's first-ever LEED-certified class A office building. It's a unique opportunity."
In addition, Fales reveals, "The building, which is on 126th street between Amsterdam and Saint Nicholas avenues, is very long and narrow—the depth at its widest part is 100 feet. Its lay out and its location allowed us to bifurcate the building and treat each entrance separately. There's one on the West that could be used for tenants coming from Metro-North, the 1 train or crosstown travel on 125th St., while one to the east would work well for those coming from Midtown on the A/B/C and D subways, which is just one or two stops away."
What are the options for these different sections of the building? "If a tenant has a significant amount of meetings, for example, and wants an entrance with a special treatment for clients, we could do that," says Fales. "Or we could do a unique building-within-a-building in each of the sections."
The building's location though, is arguably its most compelling feature, he adds. "It's faster to get there from Midtown than it is from Soho, and the vibrant revitalization of West Harlem makes it an attractive alternative from the traditional space you find in Midtown."
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Rayna Katz
Rayna Katz is a seasoned business journalist whose extensive experience includes coverage of the lodging sector, travel and the culinary space. She was most recently content director for a business-to-business publisher, overseeing four publications. While at Meeting News, a travel trade publication, she received a Best Reporting award for a story on meeting cancellations in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina.
