By Sarah Trefethen
The Times Square building that is home to the fashion school at Parsons The New School for Design is for sale.
560 Seventh Avenue is expected to fetch as much as $60 million as developers eager to tap into the area’s lucrative tourist trade vie for the plot.
“There has already been tremendous interest in the site,” said Massey Knakal chairman Bob Knakal, who is marketing the building on the corner of 40th Street with David Kalish.
Zoning allows for up to approximately 98,760 buildable square feet as-of-right, and up to a maximum of about 128,388 buildable square feet through bonuses and transfers, according to the brokerage.
Garment Center Congregation has leased a portion of the ground floor and basement through 2076, but terms of the lease allow the landlord to provide the congregation with an alternate location for their synagogue and offices after May of 2017 if the landlord wishes to demolish the building. According to the lease, the congregation pays $1 rent annually.
The property was gifted to The New School by the millionaire philanthropist Albert List in 1978, according to documents filed with the NYC Department of Finance. List also arranged the lease with the Garment Center Congregation.
The property is in the Special Midtown District, and zoning allows for hotel and commercial development. No asking price has been set.
New School, of which Parsons is a part, is building a new, 16-story, Skidmore Owings and Merrill-designed University Center in Union Square, scheduled to partially open this fall. The school is also expanding another building on 16th Street, The Albert and Vera List Academic Center.
“Given the tremendous location, we expect that any new development on this site will contain a significant retail space component which could consist of three or four floors, including the basement,” said Knakal.
Just north of the site, at 701 Seventh Avenue, a venture between the Witkoff Group, Maefield Development, Infinity Urban Century and Vector Group last year paid $430 million for a site where it plans to build a 340,000 s/f, 36-story, multi-use complex.
Dubbed the Times Square Gateway Center, it will feature retail space, a hotel tower and a massive LED sign.
An existing eleven-story office building at 701 Seventh Avenue was demolished to make way to the complex in a part of the city that sees some 500,000 people daily, according to the Times Square Alliance.
