George Soros Offers 224 West 57th Street For Sale
George Soros is looking to flip a Billionaires’ Row office building, dangling its potential for a residential conversion.
Soros Fund Management put the 140,000-square-foot Argonaut building at the corner of Broadway and West 57th Street up for sale, The Real Deal has learned. The billionaire investor’s fund management business is eyeing a price tag of about $100 million for the landmarked property.
Newmark is overseeing the sales process. An offering memo by the brokerage pitches the property, built in 1909, as “a rare opportunity to reposition an irreplaceable, [New York City]-landmarked asset into best-in-class residences in one of Manhattan’s most desirable and supply-constrained submarkets.”
If the Argonaut were to be turned into high-end apartments, it would add to the pipeline of office conversions on Billionaires’ Row. Four blocks to the east, TF Cornerstone plans to convert the office building at 135 East 57th Street into 350 apartments.
Both buildings were acquired through distress situations.
Soros Fund Management won the Argonaut at a foreclosure auction earlier this month, and TF Cornerstone acquired a ground lease on 135 East 57th Street after a court terminated Cohen Brothers Realty’s lease at the property following a default.
A representative for Soros Fund Management could not be immediately reached for comment. A Newmark team led by Adam Spies and Adam Doneger is handling marketing.
Soros expects to sell the building once it receives the deed in the next few weeks, according to the offering memo.
The building’s existing office tenancy is set to expire shortly after the closing, which would give a new owner a clear path toward conversion without having to worry about buying out existing tenants, according to the marketing materials.
The roughly 140,000-square-foot office building has additional air rights, which could boost the total buildable space to more than 200,000 square feet. The asking price works out to about $480 per buildable square foot.
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