The building where a Young & Rubicam employee died in a malfunctioning elevator last December is now for sale — and could fetch north of $150 million.
The 1926-era building at 285 Madison Ave., on the northwest corner of East 40th Street, is beginning to be marketed by Darcy Stacom and William Shanahan of CBRE.
It will be essentially vacant, which is why the pricing will be in the low-$300s a square foot.
The owner and tenant, Y&R, a division of WPP, has already signed a lease and bought space at 3 Columbus Ave. ,where they will move over the next 18 months.
CBRE will vet a buyer and complete the sale, sources said, but expects Y&R to sign a short-term lease until it can leave the Madison Avenue headquarters broom clean.
CBRE did not return calls for comment.
The 550,000-square-foot newly re-measured building is a bit overbuilt for the site under current zoning. While it does not encompass the entire blockfront from 40th to 41st streets, it is included in the Midtown East rezoning proposal. If and when that goes into effect some years from now, it may be able to be rebuilt to about 600,000 square feet with no height limitation.
Meanwhile, most potential buyers will be looking to reinvent the current 28-story structure, which has a conference center with its own 40th Street entrance. The building can hold about 30,000 square feet of retail on two floors and could also become a hotel or hotel/condo.
The building has a few set backs for terraces and pretty arched windows and even contains the bones of an old penthouse apartment. While some floors are right out of “Mad Men,” others are right out of Google’s cool office playbook.
Stay tuned.
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Down the avenue, Havas Worldwide Health, which specializes in health and wellness communications, just expanded from 109,000 to 160,000 square feet at 200 Madison Ave., which takes up the full western blockfront from East 35th to 36th streets.
Havas will renovate and take the entire sixth, seventh, ninth and part of the 20th floors for the next 15 years.
The deal includes other expansion rights — as well as access to the coveted outdoor roof deck over the ninth floor.
Havas now has space on part of the second, part of the seventh and the entire ninth floor. It will also consolidate and move in other divisions as leases expire.
The company exhausted itself space-hunting with David Falk and Jason Greenstein of Newmark Grubb Knight Frank — and then ended up renewing and expanding at the George Comfort & Sons and Loeb Partners Realty-owned building.
President and CEO Peter S. Duncan and Executive Vice President Matt Coudert of George Comfort handled negotiations for the owners. Area rents are in the $50s a square foot.
Havas recently signed a 260,000-square-foot lease in Hudson Square for other divisions.
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In a huge coup for downtown, Amerigroup Corp. of Virginia Beach is consolidating into 165,000 square feet at the pyramid-topped 14 Wall St. in a lease signed yesterday.
The asking rent was in the mid-$30s a square foot and the company will occupy the 11th, 12th, 14th, 21st and 22nd floors and will have extra signage.
Amerigroup is currently in 50,000 square feet at 21 Penn Plaza while Division Health Plus, which was acquired in April, is now in two locations totaling 150,000 square feet in Brooklyn.
The tenant was actively represented by Zev Holzman and Paul Revson of Studley and Rich Hopen of Hopen Corporate Services.
Howard Fiddle, Brad Gerla, Jonathan Cope and Evan Haskell of CBRE handled negotiations for the building.
The tenant, sources said, was attracted by the stable ownership now that Daniel Ghadamian and Josh Zamir of Capstone Equities recapitalized the building with Russian billionaire Alex Rovt this past April.
Capstone and the brokers did not return calls for comment.
Co-tenants here include Bank of America, Skidmore Owings & Merrill, NYU and Sciame Construction along with a TJ Maxx store.
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Google is gobbling more space. Some employees at GfK Custom Research North America at Chelsea Market were told last week they will have to leave their 41,713-square-foot space on the fifth floor and conduct a search to find other digs so that Google can chug right in.
In 2008, Google leased 108,632 square feet on the second through fourth floors of the quirky building that has a fun, interior food court at 75 Ninth Ave.
At the end of 2010, it also bought the full block behemoth building across the street at 111 Eighth Ave. from Taconic Partners and Jamestown, the Atlanta-based company that also owns Chelsea Market.
Google has been trying to also take over chunks of that 111 building but some tenants, like Donny Deutsch, have been reluctant to move until their leases are up, since replacement space with the same vibe is hard to come by.