The sun rises in the East: East Midtown experiences a renaissance

Distinct from Manhattan’s West Side in mood, ethos and landscape, the island’s East Side has long been characterized as more conservative and subdued. While there are plenty of historic landmarks here (Grand Central Station, the Seagram Building, Lever House), overall, the effect is a stately, understated urban panorama.

From a commercial real estate and land use perspective, there’s far less available new space to be developed compared with the West Side. This has led to a renewed focus on revitalizing existing buildings that have become functionally obsolete during the past few decades. Both the city and the Real Estate Board of New York (REBNY) have focused their efforts on creating incentives for rezoning and redevelopment to unlock the tremendous value embedded in the approximately 4 million square feet of air rights that currently remain unused.

We provided land use advice to REBNY and represented the organization in negotiations with the Department of City Planning as well as during public review of the East Midtown rezoning. In addition to our work on the reimagining of the storied Waldorf Astoria, our teams served as co-counsel for a group of lenders in their $781 million refinancing of 237 Park Ave. and represented a significant East Side religious institution in the sale of its air rights to JPMorgan Chase for its new headquarters building.

On Manhattan’s gold coast, the Upper East Side, we have collaborated on several recent development projects that have accelerated interest in this distinct neighborhood, including for:

• Gamma Real Estate, in first obtaining a ruling by the New York Supreme Court that our client could foreclose on Sutton 58, the site of a proposed 1,000-foot-tall condominium tower, and then securing a $147 million bridge financing package from CIM Group in the $91.1 million sale of three penthouses totaling 12,000 square feet on the 92nd and 93rd floors of the supertall 432 Park Ave., the second-most-expensive condo sale in New York City history
• Alexico in its $265 million leasehold mortgage and mezzanine refinancing of The Mark Hotel, a luxury hotel, restaurant and cooperative apartment property at 25 East 77th St.
• Extell Development in assembling the development rights and securing the zoning approvals for The Kent, a recently completed building at 200 East 95th St. containing about 223,000 square feet of residential, retail and educational space