Real Estate

Big boost for Sandy-ravaged Water St.

Continuing an epic recovery from the effects of Hurricane Sandy, mammoth 55 Water St. — the city’s largest office building and the second-largest in the US — has signed a lease with the city’s Health and Hospitals Corp. for 240,000 square feet, sources told The Post.

The move will allow HHC to consolidate from several locations around town.

The deal leaves a mere 30,000 square feet available of the 53-story tower’s total 3.8 million. Some of the space to be taken by the agency will be vacated in 2015 by Depository Trust Co., which is moving most of its offices to New Jersey.

The HHC lease “was a long time in coming, due to the slowness with which government bureaucracies move and the Sandy impact,” a source said.

It’s good news not only for the tower’s owner, Retirement Systems of Alabama, but for downtown and especially the Water Street corridor, which was near-devastated by the storm and where signs of damage still remain visible.

After Sandy flooded 55 Water St.’s lower floors with around 40 million gallons of sea water last fall, the landlord spent up to $100 million to restore it to use and to safeguard it against future flooding.

RSA executive Harry Bridgwood led a 400-strong army of tradespeople to reopen the tower to tenants including Standard & Poors.