U.N. Women, a newly formed office of the United Nations that became operational earlier this year, has taken 85,000 s/f at 220 East 42nd Street. Asking rents in the building are around $55 per s/f, although it was not clear by press time what the UN had negotiated to pay.
The deal will bring a U.N. tenant back to the roughly 1.1 million s/f property after the United Nations Population Fund relocated from the building to Third Avenue last year.
Andrew Roos, a vice chairman of Colliers International, represented U.N. Women in the transaction.
Roos has handled a number of recent deals with the international organization, which is a major tenant in the city, especially on the East Side, in the vicinity of its waterfront headquarters.
Last year, Roos moved the Population Fund, a branch of the agency that handles issues related to reproductive health, into about 130,000 s/f at 605 Third Avenue. The lease, which was complicated to structure, was a candidate for the Real Estate Board of New York’s Deal of the Year award.
Since then, Roos has filled the space left by the UNFPA, the Population Fund’s acronym, with other U.N. tenants. U.N. Women is taking floors 17, 18, 19 and part of the fourth in a deal that stretches for ten years. Late last year, Roos arranged to have another U.N. agency fill the other portion of the space. In that deal, the United Nations Development Programme, a subsidiary that provides a host of services to governments around the world, including policy advice on democratic governance and poverty reduction, signed a 10-year, 43,000 s/f lease for the building’s entire 20th, 21st, and 23rd floors.
U.N. Women was created last summer and will focus on gender equality and the empowerment of women, according to information on its website. Last year it was announced that Michelle Bachelet, the president of Chile, will head the organization.
220 East 42nd Street is owned by the real estate investment trust SL Green, one of the largest landlords in the city. Officials at SL Green didn’t respond to a request for comment.
