Extell plans new 37-story resi, hotel, retail tower at 655 Madison, site bought for $159M
655 Madison Avenue schematic rendering (Credit - Maxwell W. Pau architect via DOB)
Gary Barnett’s Extell Development submitted a new building construction project for a 37-story, 161,208 square-foot mixed-use building at 655 Madison Avenue in Lenox Hill, Manhattan, with residential, hotel, office and retail, in a tower-on-base construction style. The plan calls for a total of 62 apartment and hotel units, and was filed with the New York City Department of Buildings on November 18, 2024 under job number M01139026. The filing does not specify the number of hotel units or the number of residential units.
The project is described in the filing as: full demolition of an existing 24-story office building. The site is to be redeveloped as a mixed-use 37-story class A commercial / residential (occupancy classification R-2 / B/ M) new building with residential amenities. (The filing in another field also includes the classification for hotels, R-1.)
David Rothstein of Extell filed the plans. The architect is Beyer Blinder Belle.
A report at the time of the sale said the residential units would be for-sale condominium apartments.
The building will have about 4,821 square feet of retail on the ground floor, approximately 8,400 square feet of office space each on floors two, three and four, and the 62 residential and hotel units with a total of approximately 120,970 square feet on floors seven through 36, for an average size of 1,951 square feet. (655 Madison Zoning Diagram pdf)
655 Madison Avenue
| wdt_ID | floor | comment | description | persons_permitted | occupancy_label | zoning_use | dwelling_units |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Cellar | RETAIL | Retail Sale | 79 | Mercantile | 6A | |
| 2 | Cellar | STORAGE AND TRASH COMPACTOR ROOM | Storage of non combustible Materials | 266 | Storage | 5B | |
| 3 | Cellar | ELEVATOR LOBBY, SERVICE LOBBY | Hotel | 266 | Residential | 5B | |
| 4 | Cellar | MECHANICAL BOH | Mechanical and/or electrical equipment room | 0 | Factory and Industrial | 5B | |
| 5 | 1 | OFFICE | Office | 13 | Business | 5B | |
| 6 | 1 | RESIDENTIAL LOBBY, PACKAGE ROOM | Hotel | 82 | Residential | 5B | |
| 7 | 1 | RETAIL | Retail Sale | 164 | Mercantile | 5B | |
| 8 | 2 | OFFICE | Office | 86 | Business | 5B | |
| 9 | 2 | ELEVATOR LOBBY | Hotel | 24 | Residential | 5B | |
| 10 | 2 | STORAGE | Storage of non combustible Materials | 28 | Storage | 5B |
The property
The existing office building in Lenox Hill has 198,347 square feet of built space according to a PincusCo analysis of city data. The parcel has frontage of 100 feet and is 109 feet deep with a total lot size of 10,946 square feet. The zoning is C5-3 which allows for up to 15 times floor area ratio (FAR) for commercial and up to 10 times FAR for residential with inclusionary housing. The city-designated market value for the property in 2022 is $111.3 million. The most recent loan totaled $150 million and was provided by Tyko Capital on October 10, 2024.
Prior sales and revenue
This property was sold by Williams Equities for $159.4 million to Extell Development on October 10, 2024.
The 198,347-square-foot property generated revenue of $22.7 million or $115 per square foot, according to the most recent income and expense figures.
Violations and lawsuits
According to city public data, the property has received $1,000 in OATH penalties in the last year.
There were no lawsuits or bankruptcies filed against the property for the past 24 months.
The neighborhood
In Lenox Hill, The bulk, or 34 percent of the 53.3 million square feet of commercial built space are elevator buildings, with specialty buildings next occupying 30 percent of the space. In sales, Lenox Hill has the highest sale turnover among other neighborhoods in the city with $4.5 billion in sales volume in the last two years. For development, Lenox Hill has near average amount of major developments among other neighborhoods and is the 9th highest in Manhattan. It had 3.2 million square feet of commercial and multi-family construction under development in the last two years, which represents 6 percent of the neighborhood’s built space.
The block
On this tax block, PincusCo has identified the owners of nine of the 11 commercial properties representing 1,145,832 square feet of the 1,251,557 square feet. The largest owner is Adler Group, followed by Extell Development and then Graff. On the tax block, there was one new building construction project filed totaling 161,208 square feet. It is a 62-unit, 161,208 square-foot 70 building submitted by David Rothstein with plans filed November 18, 2024 and it has not been permitted yet.
The owner
The PincusCo database currently indicates that Extell Development owned at least 65 commercial properties with 651 residential units in New York City with 2,776,081 square feet and a city-determined market value of $788.8 million. (Market value is typically about 50% of actual value.) The portfolio has $7.1 billion in debt, with top three lenders as Guggenheim Partners, Blackstone Group, and JVP Management respectively. Within the portfolio, the bulk, or 39 percent of the 2,776,081 square feet of built space are specialty properties, with elevator properties next occupying 21 percent of the space. The bulk, or 96 percent of the built space, is in Manhattan, with Brooklyn next at 4 percent of the space.
The surrounding
Within a 400-foot radius of 31 East 60 Street, PincusCo identified 14 commercial real estate items of interests occurred over the past 24 months. Of those 14 items, one was for major renovation including a certificate of occupancy change. It was a permit issued on September 12, 2023 for the $19.8 million renovation of zero-square-foot residential (R-2) building with 41 residential units at 660 Madison Avenue. Of those 14 items, eight were sales above $5 million totaling $344.2 million. The most recent of the eight was Friedland Properties which bought the 9,320-square-foot, 12-unit mixed-use building (K4) on 673 Madison Avenue for $36 million from Duell family on September 26, 2024. Of those 14 items, five were loans above $5 million totaling $352.7 million. The most recent of the five was Jenel Management in which borrowed $80 million from Apollo Global Management secured by one condo unit in the 264,498-square-foot, two-unit mixed-use building (RC) on 660 Madison Avenue on July 10, 2024.
Direct link to the property’s ACRIS page and link to DOB NOW portal.