Extell Lands $425M Loan to Build First Avenue Tower
The 30-story building adds to mix of medical, commercial offices on Upper East Side.
Extell Development has closed on a $425M construction loan to complete a mixed-use, 30-story tower at 1520 First Avenue on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.
The developer plans to fill the new tower with a mix of medical and commercial office space—part of a growing district along York Avenue of major medical tenants, including some of the city’s largest hospitals, expanding their office footprints to the north and to the south.
The tower is rising between East 80th and East 81st streets. The construction financing is being provided by a group of investors including InterVest Capital Partners, Rexmark, Pacific Western Bank and Harbor Group International.
In 2018, Extell acquired ten neighboring parcels to the building site at 1520 First Avenue and demolished properties containing an estimated 100 apartments and about a dozen retailers, according to a report in NY Yimby.
As part of its tower project, Extell is building extended lower floors that will include more than 390K SF of rentable medical space and retail.
A total of 196K SF is pre-leased to the Hospital for Special Surgery (HSS), New York’s world-famous spinal surgery hospital, which began during the Civil War as an Army field hospital that invented the first knee replacement.
HSS has been expanding from its unique surgical hospital on 71St, which overhangs the East River, with several new buildings under construction and a growing need for medical office space.
In September, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center disclosed that it is buying two-thirds of NYC’s Lipstick Building on Third Avenue for $300M from SL Green.
The hospital is acquiring 430K of the 34-story, high-profile building, which earned its nickname from its distinctive oval shape and pink marble façade, the NY Post reported.
The building gained notoriety in 2008 when its upper floors served as the headquarters for the investment firm of Ponzi-scheme swindler Bernie Madoff before he was arrested and relocated to a federal prison.
Memorial Sloan Kettering will take the base of the building up, which runs up to the sixth floor, and several floors in the tower portion. The building’s previous anchor tenant, the law firm Lathan & Watkins, vacated the space after relocating to tower at 1271 Sixth Avenue.
NYC’s premier cancer-fighting hospital will use the space in the Lipstick Tower, located on 855 Third Ave. at East 53rd Street, to consolidate research and administrative offices.
The acquisition continued the trend of hospital campuses located uptown on York Avenue expanding into additional space in Midtown.