New York’s largest office-to-condo conversion nearing completion

One Wall Street, which claims to be the largest office-to-condo conversion project in New York City’s history, should be ready to start accepting purchase offers for its homes this fall for its opening in 2020.

In 2014, Macklowe Properties paid $585 million to acquire this 50-story, 1.1-million-sf Art Deco tower in New York’s Financial District, which had been built in the early 1930s for the Irving Trust Company, and expanded in 1963. When its renovation is completed, One Wall Street will offer 566 residences (whose selling prices are expected to average $3 million, according to various news reports), and more than 100,000 sf of amenities that include an enclosed pool on floors 35 and 36, and a 39th-floor roof deck overlooking New York harbor.

Forty-seven apartments will have their own private terraces.

To free up more space, the Building Team moved the stairwell to the center of the building, and reduced the number of elevators to 10, form 34. Image: Courtesy of Macklowe Properties

Joseph Bosco, Macklowe’s senior project manager, who has been on the renovation since 2015, tells BD+C that this industrial, steel-framed building was not especially conducive to residential conversion. For one thing, it had 34 passenger elevators that Bosco says took up a tremendous amount of space. The renovation reduced that elevator count to 10, and moved the building’s stairwell from the interior periphery to the center of the building. “The stairs are now aligned with the elevator core,” he says.

One Wall Street is actually two buildings: a 52-story tower that opened in 1931, and a 30-story tower that debuted in 1964. Bosco explains that the latter building is more of an annex, and its connection with the taller tower is “seamless.” The annex is getting a six-story addition at the top as part of the reno.

One hundred tweny seven of the residential units will be studios in the 500-sf range, says Bosco. The rest of the homes will be one-, two-, and three-bedroom apartments in the 1,500- and 2,000-ft range at the higher levels of the tower. There will also be a 12,000-sf triplex penthouse, the price for which Bosco couldn’t say when interviewed.

Up until 2017, Macklowe had intended that 65% of the residential units would be rentals. It switched gears to for-sale units exclusively, partly in response to the glut of luxury rentals and condos on the market.

The developer got permission from the city’s Landmarks Commission to replace the windows in the building. And it also spent 16 months and $1 million restoring a 9,000-sf lobby mosaic installation known as the Red Room, created by artisan Hildreth Meière.

To accommodate ground-floor retail that will include a three-story 44,000-sf Whole Foods grocery, the building team created a glass curtainwall at the building’s base. Macklowe’s team includes SLCE Architects (architect and AOR), Cosentini (ME), DeSimone Consulting Engineers (SE), and JT Magen (GC).

The website CityRealty reports that Macklowe Properties’ sellout price for One Wall Street is now $1.686 billion, up from than earlier price of $1.5 billion.