WORLD-famous auction house Sotheby’s is actively searching for a new home in Midtown as it considers a hospital’s offer to sublease the auctioneer’s gleaming York Avenue headquarters.
Sources say that an unidentified neighboring medical institution covets the Sotheby’s property, long a focal point of the New York art world, and wants to sublease its nearly 500,000 square feet.
Sources confirm Sotheby’s is “in the market” and trolling several possible new locations. Among them are two blocks of space controlled by Time Warner – the media company’s former home at 75 Rockefeller Plaza, which TW leases, and the new Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle, which TW owns.
As it gradually moves into its new home, Time Warner will leave behind most of 75 Rock’s 560,000 square feet. It is also marketing about 200,000 of its total 880,000 feet at Columbus Circle, as The Post has reported.
Sotheby’s real estate broker, Paul Kotcher of Brickman Associates, declined comment other than to say that “75 Rock is one of the alternatives we’re considering” and that “all possibilities are open” as to whether or not Sotheby’s would leave York Avenue entirely.
Time Warner’s broker, Cushman & Wakefield heavy hitter John Cefaly, could not be reached for comment yesterday.
Sotheby’s space search does not guarantee it will move. Publicly held companies often explore real estate options that might help their bottom line without undercutting operations. It could not immediately be established what savings or profit Sotheby’s might realize from relocating.
But sources said Sotheby’s might well decamp altogether from York Avenue and set up shop in two different Midtown locations – perhaps splitting its auction/exhibition space from office and warehousing space.
A move from 1334 York Ave. would surprise the auction world, for whom the house’s headquarters, at 72nd Street, has long been a focus of the global, high-stakes art-sale scene.
The Post reported yesterday that Sotheby’s is poised to auction off an early Picasso masterpiece, the 1905 “Boy With a Pipe,” in a sale that could fetch a record $100 million.
In 2001, architects Kohn Pedersen Fox completed a remake of the Sotheby’s building that dramatically enlarged it from four stories to 10 and replaced the granite facade with curtain-wall glass in varying degrees of transparency and translucency. The AIA Guide to New York City celebrates it as “an ethereal box” on York Avenue’s institutional-looking hospital row.
Sotheby’s once owned the property but sold it in 2002 to Aby Rosen‘s RFR Realty for $175 million, according to Real Estate Alert. The deal included a leaseback arrangement under which Sotheby’s leases the building for 40 years.
In Sotheby’s annual report for 2002, Chairman Michael I. Sovern said, “Sotheby’s will continue to occupy the building, widely regarded as the best auction facility in the world, under a lease agreement for a period of up to 40 years.”
If Sotheby’s does move, there’s a precedent. Archrival Christie’s decided to exit its longtime home on Park Avenue for 20 Rockefeller Plaza in 1998.
Sotheby’s vice president of media relations, Diana Phillips, said the auction house had no comment.
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Consulting giant McKinsey & Co. has apparently decided to stay at 55 E. 52nd St., disappointing developer Bruce Ratner and the owners of several tenant-starved Midtown office buildings. Sources said a “document was out,” although no new lease has yet been signed.
With McKinsey’s 330,000-square-foot lease coming up in the Fisher Bros.-owned building, it had entered talks with Ratner about anchoring his half of The New York Times headquarters tower, planned for Eighth Avenue at 40th Street.
Ratner has said he can’t obtain financing for the project until he has secured a commitment for the upper portion, which he will own. The Times will own the bottom half.
In the absence of a tenant, Ratner has sought Liberty Bond financing from the state and city – originally $400 million worth, a request later reduced to $150 million. All parties remain mum as to where those talks are.
Meanwhile, although Ratner has yet to start excavation, things appear to be moving in that direction: As demolition of condemned buildings picks up steam, the site now resembles a full-bore construction job.
McKinsey is said to have also kicked the tires at several Midtown buildings, but Ratner is the only landlord with whom the firm is known to have conducted a negotiation.
John Whelan, the Fisher organization’s agent for 55 E. 52nd St., declined to comment.