NYC towers put final touches on major upgrades as they buck downtown malaise

We know the bad news about downtown: offices 30% vacant, Water Street a near ghost town and some old buildings facing foreclosure. But  there’s better news as well. And it isn’t all at the World Trade Center and Brookfield Place.

Two major towers on Liberty Street shrugged off the pandemic’s worst damage and their owners are putting the final touches on their ongoing success.

The first is at 28 Liberty St. – owned by Fosun Hive Holdings, the real estate division of Chinese conglomerate Fosun International. Fosun has gone from success to success at the 60-story, 2.5 million square-foot tower since buying it from JPMorgan Chase for $750 million in 2017 and spending $160 million more to modernize.

The skyscraper, a designated city landmark, is more than 89% office-leased and will soon reach percentages in the mid-90s when several pending deals are completed, according to Thomas  Costanzo, a global partner of Fosun and  CEO of Four Trees Asset Management which runs the building.

Most of the retail space is leased as well. Now, Fosun is turning its attention to the final piece of the puzzle — roughly 30,000 square feet for a flexible  event space it’s  branding as Halo, set at the tower’s base, which can accommodate up to 750 guests.

Costanzo said Halo would complement the tower’s top-floor restaurant, Union Square Hospitality’s Manhatta,  which does a thriving events business.

The new, ground-floor venue is adjacent to the tower’s famed 2.5-acre plaza designed around  sculptures including  Jean Dubuffet’s “Group of Four Trees.”

Costanzo said  Halo, still partly under construction, has already  been booked for events including one for this month’s Fashion Week, although he wouldn’t name the designer. Halo is run by Jason Berkeley, the COO of  Four Trees Capital Management
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After Chase moved out, Fosun drew new  tenants such as the New York State Attorney General’s office and AIG.

“We basically re-leased the whole building,” Costanzo said.

Office asking rents range from the mid-$50s to mid-$70s per square foot.

The tower’s 200,000 square feet of retail space are home to a 45,000 square-foot, 15-screen Alamo Drafthouse Cinema complex; a 20,000 square-foot indoor soccer facility called Socceroof, and Court 16, a 13,000 square-foot tennis and pickleball club.

Halo was made possible when a 2019 deal for a 30,000 square-foot food hall collapsed with the pandemic.

“The decision not to proceed with another food hall” was fortuitous,” Costanzo said, as the area now has many high-end food options.

Costanzo was optimistic about the rest of downtown.

“The market has always been challenged with historically higher vacancy than uptown, and the older stock certainly doesn’t help. But we’ll see more residential conversions and adaptive reuses,” he predicted.

Another success story can be found at One Liberty Plaza. Brookfield Properties’ 54-story, 2.3 million square-foot black steel monolith at Broadway and Liberty Street, across from Zuccotti Park, is 83% leased to such notable tenants as Cleary Gottlieb, Aon, Transatlantic Reinsurance and the New York City Economic Development Corp.

The skyscraper  received a $750 million refinancing package led by Morgan Stanley in June — paving  the way for what Brookfield at the time called “significant capital improvements.”

Now, Brookfield has begun an ambitious project to modernize the tower’s sprawling lobbies. The redesign will boast new,  double-height  spaces with 40-foot high ceilings and 17-foot-tall  windows, Italian travertine wall cladding, terrazzo floors, and custom furniture by interiors firm Gachot and works  by French contemporary artist Pierre Huyghe.

The project, to be completed in early 2026, will be directed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, the original designer of the former US Steel Building.