Rockpoint is showing its taste for New York again with the Boston-based real estate private equity firm’s first major post-pandemic office investment.
SL Green Realty, Manhattan’s largest office landlord, sold to Rockpoint a 49% stake in a renovated property just south of Grand Central Terminal, the firms said Tuesday in a statement.
The deal valued 100 Park Ave. at $425 million, they said, and comes after SL Green last year bought back a 49.9% interest in the property from its previous joint venture partner, PGIM, according to CoStar data.
Manhattan’s office leasing last year rose 20.1% from a year earlier to 42.9 million square feet, its highest level since 2014, according to a study from the brokerage Savills. Demand has been driven by tenants seeking new or renovated office properties near transit hubs such as Grand Central, leading to what a separate Colliers report described as Manhattan’s office rebound reaching a “watershed” moment.
The transaction “underscores the strength of high-quality office assets in premier locations in an improving Manhattan office market,” SL Green Chief Investment Officer Harrison Sitomer said in the statement.
100 Park, between 40th and 41st streets, recently renovated its amenity center on the second floor to include a lounge, golf simulator, game room, personal training studio and conference rooms, SL Green and Rockpoint said. Major tenants include global information services company AlphaSights, which signed a 10-year lease for 192,630 square feet in March 2022, and corporate turnaround and restructuring firm Alvarez & Marsal Holdings, which signed a 15-year lease for 220,221 square feet in December 2024, they said.
Asking rent in the Grand Central market, where the property sits, has reached a record high of $82.14 per square foot, above New York metro’s average of $60, according to a CoStar analysis.
“As our first significant post-COVID office investment, 100 Park represents the kind of highly targeted opportunity that we find attractive today given the vibrancy of New York and the favorable supply/demand dynamics for high quality and extremely well-located properties like this one,” Dan Domb, a managing member and chief operating officer at Rockpoint, said in the statement.
Rockpoint has been a longtime office investor with 106 office deals in the United States made over the past three decades. Its properties in New York include 1700 Broadway between Times Square and Central Park and 412 W. 15th St. in the Meatpacking District.
The firm isn’t just a buyer in Manhattan office space. It’s also in the process of selling One Dag Hammarskjöld Plaza by the United Nations headquarters complex at about half of what it had paid for just before the pandemic in 2019.
For the record
Adam Spies and Doug Harmon of Newmark advised on the transaction.