NYU Acquires East Side Luxury Residential Tower for $210M

New York University continues to expand its footprint as one of the largest property owners in NYC, this week acquiring a 23-story luxury apartment building on the East Side of Manhattan.

NYU’s Grossman School of Medicine has acquired the Lanthian, a 209-unit tower at 377 East 33rd Street that is adjacent to NYU Langone Health’s Kimmel Pavilion inpatient care facility in the Kips Bay section of Manhattan.

The university bought the tower from California-based Verbena Road Holdings for $210M, which is significantly more than the reported asking price of $170M. Eastdil Secured marketed the property.

NYU is taking over a mortgage on the building from New York Life, which the insurance giant acquired from Signature Bank in 2019.  The medical school has a lease for 20K SF of commercial space in the Lanthian that runs through 2038.

NYU is planning to use the residential tower to house faculty, staff and trainees, according to a report in TheRealDeal. NYU Langone has been expanding its main campus, which spans a four-block area from East 30th to East 34th Streets stretching from First Avenue to the FDR drive.

NYU’s real estate footprint in NYC now totals more than 15M SF—one of the top 10 portfolios in the city and the largest among universities and colleges based in the city—most it concentrated around its main campus in Greenwich Village. In recent months, the university also has been expanding its holdings in Brooklyn.

Last fall, NYU acquired 3 MetroTech Center, a 10-story Class A office building in downtown Brooklyn, from JPMorgan for $122M.

The building, part of the 16-acre, 5M SF MetroTech Center office park and educational hub, is next door to NYU’s Tandon School of Engineering at 5 MetroTech Center. JPMorgan vacated 3 MetroTech Center in 2020.

In 2017, NYU announced an investment of more than $500M in its Brooklyn campus, including the Tandon School (formerly known as Polytechnic University) and the university’s Center for Urban Science and Progress.

In 2021, NYU completed construction on a 735K SF building on Mercer Street at the main campus in Greenwich Village.

Medical schools and major hospitals have been on an acquisitions binge on the East Side of Manhattan in recent months. In September, Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center bought two-thirds of NYC’s Lipstick Building on Third Avenue for $300M from SL Green.

The hospital acquired 430K of the 34-story, high-profile building, which earned its nickname from its distinctive oval shape and pink marble façade. The building gained notoriety in 2008 when its upper floors served as the headquarters for the investment firm of Ponzi-scheme swindler Bernie Madoff.