SL Green Realty Corp announced on Monday that Metro-North Commuter Railroad Company, a subsidiary of New York State’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA), has signed a 20-year lease covering 265,903 s/f at 420 Lexington Avenue.
Also known as the Graybar Building, the 30-story, 1.2 million-square-foot property is located adjacent to Grand Central Terminal.
The lease covers a 133,503 s/f renewal for the entire 11th, 12th and partial 22nd floors plus an additional 132,400 s/f expansion on the entire 10th floor and significant portions of the 2nd, 3rd and 5th floors.
“This was an exceedingly complicated transaction, which took nearly 20 months to complete and involved a plethora of moving parts, included the participation of numerous stake-holders,” said Steven Durels, executive vice president and director of leasing and real property for SL Green.
“The transaction has resulted in significant asset value creation, as large areas of the expansion space had previously been underutilized for storage, mechanical or corridor use and are now leased on a full market basis as office space.”
The expansion required assembling 34 separate spaces as well as the relocation or recapture of 15 occupied tenant spaces.
Additionally, SL Green will perform all construction covering upgrades to building infrastructure and Metro-North’s office build-out, including management of a multi-phased turn-key design/build solution necessary to meet a critical path timeline.
SL Green has signed 73 leases with tenants this year at the Graybar Building in addition to Metro-North covering over 456,000 s/f. Building occupancy will increase to over 94% after delivery of the Metro-North expansion space.
Josh Kuriloff, Jodi Roberts and David Heller of Cushman & Wakefield, Inc. represented Metro-North. SL Green was represented by its own in-house leasing team.
