We weren’t exaggerating when we recently foresaw a “rolling thunder” cavalcade of large new office deals by year’s end.
But the largest was one we didn’t see coming: a 445,000 square-foot expansion by Wells Fargo at Related Companies’ 20 Hudson Yards that swallowed up all of the former Neiman Marcus floors as well as adjacent space.
When pandemic-cursed Neiman Marcus closed its seven-floor emporium in the 20 Hudson Yards mall in July 2020, just eighteen months after it opened, more than a few “experts” proclaimed that it signified the failure of Related chairman Stephen M. Ross’s entire $25 billion vision for the Far West Side.
AdWeek snorted, “Neiman Marcus’ Hudson Yards Exit Is a Failure for the Entire Development.” The New York Times fretted, “How Will Hudson Yards Survive the Pandemic?”
But Ross and partner Oxford Property Group have the last laugh.
Wells Fargo’s expansion, which the bank announced last week, isn’t a lease but a purchase which CoStar valued at $550 million.
It gives the bank a total of 950,000 square feet in the complex where it bought nine floors at adjoining 30 Hudson Yards in 2015, CoStar said.
Some 95 percent of the complex’s 8.8 million square feet of expensive offices are either leased or owned by marquee-name users such as BlackRock, Facebook, Tapestry, Boies Schiller Flexner, and Point72 Asset Management.
The towers’ seventy-plus percent physical occupancy is among the highest in the city.
Now if only Related can figure out a way to reopen the Vessel, which closed after a fourth troubled person jumped to his death from it last year.
Ross and Co. are geniuses at design.
Surely there’s a common-sense solution — like higher glass walls, for instance?