Manhattan’s near-century-old Helmsley Building above New York's Grand Central Terminal has posted its highest asking rent ever — $120 per square foot — with a lease expansion, as the cost of Manhattan’s top-dollar workplace spaces rise to record highs.
StoneX, a global financial-services firm, has added its footprint at 230 Park Ave., between 45th and 46th streets, by 21,904 square feet in a 10-year deal on the 32nd floor near the top of the building, according to landlord RXR. StoneX’s current footprint on the 10th floor spans 72,838 square feet.
The new space's asking rent per square foot was the highest ever for the building, an RXR spokesperson told CoStar News. The landlord did not release the actual lease rate StoneX agreed to pay for the additional space.
The feat comes as the corporate headquarters-heavy Park Avenue corridor has one of the tightest vacancy rates in the city and has helped drive Manhattan’s top-dollar deals last year to record highs, brokerage studies show.
Still, despite the top-dollar asking rent, the 34-story property, built in 1929, is at risk of being foreclosed after it defaulted on a $670 million commercial mortgage-backed securities loan in 2023, according to CoStar data. RXR has been in talks with lenders and currently has a 90-day forbearance agreement that expires on March 14 and gives it a temporary break, CoStar data shows. RXR has funded $14 million of equity to reserves tied to the recent forbearance and is raising additional funds to finalize a loan restructuring before the March deadline.
The building has struggled after the pandemic upended the office market and major tenants such as Voya Financial and Clarion Partners have moved out. The property has a vacancy rate of 36%, more than double the 14% rate of the Grand Central office market, where the property sits, according to CoStar data.
RXR bought the building in May 2015 with private-equity giant Blackstone for $1.21 billion before Blackstone later sold its interest.
The 1.4 million-square-foot tower saw its value decline nearly 40% to $770 million from $1.3 billion when the CMBS loan was issued in 2021, according to a 2024 report from bond-rating firm Morningstar Credit.
A Morningstar analyst previously told CoStar News the prewar building wasn’t able to be modernized in a way that would compete with newly built trophy office properties that have attracted demand from well-resourced tenants in the flight-to-quality trend.
The spokesperson declined to comment on the building’s loan update.
For the record
The tenant was represented by Mark Weiss, Scott Shelbourne and Melissa Rubenstein of Cushman & Wakefield. RXR was represented by Brian Waterman, Scott Klau, Erik Harris, Zach Weil and Cole Gendels of Newmark, and in-house by Andrew Ackerman and Walter Rooney.