Axel Stawski’s office building at 579 Fifth Ave. has quietly undergone an entire artistic and mechanical transformation into a sleek modern boutique property.
Kohn Pederson Fox designed the upgrades to the 1954-era Emery Roth & Sons-designed building at the southwest corner of W. 47th St. that is known for its wedding cake setbacks and horizontal white brick façade.
That brick has now been covered with a low-iron glass with a Polar White interlayer, giving it a glossy sheen.
But the most noticeable change to eagle-eyed passersby will be that the architects removed the large vertical white limestone slab at the edge of the façade and created continuous glass corner offices. CBRE is marketing the few available floors.
The Bank Leumi retail storefront is also getting a face-lift that will show more glass and be hospitable toward a fashion tenant when the bank’s lease ends in a few years.
Inside, the lobby has been enlarged and everything — including the concierge desk — completely covered in a rusticated Italian Solar Grey marble with polished floors. Elevator cabs, hallways and other upgrades were also made to the building that is focusing on upgrading tenancies from tiny jewelers to full-floor office users.
“Axel enjoyed working with KPF on 505 Fifth,” said Faith Ryan, director of management and leasing for Stawski Partners about their ground up building on the northeast corner of E. 42nd St.
“Even though the reworking of 579 Fifth Ave. was a ‘small’ project of 150,000 square feet, KPF worked on it with as great a degree of professionalism and with the same eye for elegance/quality as they did with their original design of 505 Fifth.”
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We’ve learned that David Tawfik of Princeton International Properties has signed a contract to pay about $105 million for Park House at 104 W. 40th St. by Bryant Park. The deal works out to just under $500 per square foot for the 220,000-square-foot building.
Sources said current owners, Savanna, gave the sales assignment to Douglas Harmon and Adam Spies of Eastdil, who brought it to market in early August. Among others, Tawfik owns Tower 52 at 150 E. 52nd St; 650 First Ave.; and 232 Madison Ave. Princeton was founded in 1982 by his father, Albert, who died in May at the age of 86.
Eastdil had sold Savanna ING’s defaulted debt about two years ago and later arranged a deal with owner Myers Mermel to transfer the keys. Savanna completed a capital improvement program and boosted occupancy to 70 percent.
CBRE offers available spaces with rents on CoStar lists ranging from the high $40s to mid-$60s a square foot.
The mid-block, landmarked building was previously known as the Spring Mills Building for its original tenant and sits next to the now-under-construction 7 Bryant Park, where rents will run $100 a square foot, or so.
Savanna declined comment through a spokesman, while Tawfik and the Eastdil brokers did not return calls and e-mails for comment.
This is the second building Savanna has put into contract in the last few months through Eastdil’s dynamic duo: 386 Park Ave. South, where Monday Properties is a minority partner, is being sold for more than $110 million to Billy Macklowe and a Grove International Partners’ fund, and should close shortly.
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Jared Kushner has purchased a $53 million portfolio of seven walk-ups in the East Village, West Village and in SoHo from Benchmark and will soon close on an eighth property, which will bring the total to $58 million.
According to Aaron Jungreis, of Rosewood Realty Group, who represented Benchmark, the deal started as the one building, off-market purchase of 54 Barrow St., brought directly to Kushner, but it “morphed.”
“They hit it off and decided to give him some more,” said Jungreis of Benchmark’s Jordan Vogel and Aaron Feldman.
The purchase of 140 units and 11 stores included 54 Barrow, 120 McDougal, 267 E. 10th, 435 E. 9th, 156 Sullivan, 311 E. 11th and 311 E. 6th St. The other building, at 99 E. 7th St., will close next month.
Kushner Cos. has rolled up about 11,000 multi-family units this year, including two buildings in New Jersey for $57.5 million, and a 25 percent stake in 5,517 apartments in the Baltimore area worth $500 million.
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For its fifth city store, shoe king Stuart Weitzman has leased 800 square feet at 118 Spring St. in Soho for the next decade. The asking rents for the block are in the $600- per-square-foot range.
The tenant was represented by the Cushman & Wakefield retail team of Joanne Podell and Ian Lerner and co-brokered with Jason Pruger of Newmark Grubb Knight Frank. The owners were represented by Paul Popkin. The building owners also operate the current Jenny B store, which will now be relocated.
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An organization that serves LGBTQ youths has renewed and expanded its headquarters at 740 Broadway and the connecting 2-10 Astor Place, which is the location for its Harvey Milk School.
The Hetrick-Martin Institute (HMI), the nation’s oldest and largest provider of support and programming for lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning young people was founded in 1979.
The group will remain on the 3rd floor at 2-10 Astor Place and the entire 3rd floor at 740 Broadway, where it will soon include the entire 8th floor. Total occupancy will be 31,721 square feet.
The Harvey Milk High School was named for the slain San Francisco politician and gay-rights champion — played by Sean Penn in the movie.
Carri Lyon, Tom Kaufman and Rory Murphy of Cushman & Wakefield represented HMI in the transaction. Jeffrey Gural, Brian Steinwurtzel and Donna Vogel of Newmark Grubb Knight Frank represented the building ownership.
“Many tech firms would have liked that space,” said Lyon. “We started 18 months ago when the asking rents were in the $30s, and [Newmark] honored the deal.”
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An audience of 19,000 at Bruce Springsteen’s outdoor concert at upstate Vernon Downs was infiltrated by 2,200 active-duty military personnel who got free tickets through the USO — thanks to track owner Jeff Gural (also chairman of Newmark Grubb Knight Frank).
Gural told us that he started out donating all the ticket proceeds to the local food bank and veterans organizations.
“And then I got carried away,” Gural explains. “The USO had such a demand for the first 2,000, I bought 200 more.”