Vanbarton files plans for 440 units at Midtown East conversion purchased for $135M

Vanbarton Group through the entity East 43rd NYC LLC submitted a major alteration application for a conversion of the office building at 6 East 43rd Street in Grand Central, Manhattan, to a residential building with 440 units. The plan was filed with the New York City Department of Buildings on October 6, 2025 under job number M01297210. It calls for the increase in size of the building from a 26-story building with no dwelling units to a 26-story building with 440 dwelling units. The project is described in the filing as: application is being filed for the enlargement and conversion of the existing office building to residential use. Joseph Chilelli of Vanbarton Group submitted the plans. The architect is Gensler

The filing says the building has 298,528 square feet of zoning space, and of that 288,459 square feet will be residential and 10,069 square feet will be commercial.

• Vanbarton Group pays $135M to Emigrant Bank for office-to-resi conversion in Grand Central (October 06, 2025)

• Capstone, Republic Investment pay $39.8M to Vanbarton for Tribeca hotel (August 07, 2025)

• Vanbarton, AVRS pay $103M to Archdiocese, get $150M construction loan for resi conversion in Sutton Place (July 22, 2025)

• Vanbarton pays $95.5M to William Kaufman Org, Principal, for FiDi office for resi conversion (December 13, 2024)

6 East 43rd Street

The property

The office building in Grand Central has 304,525 square feet of built space according to a PincusCo analysis of city data. The parcel has frontage of 82 feet and is 200 feet deep with a total lot size of 17,975 square feet. The lot is irregular. The zoning is C5-2.5 which allows for up to 12 times floor area ratio (FAR) for commercial. The city-designated market value for the property in 2022 is $107.1 million. The most recent loan totaled $225 million and was provided by Corebridge Financial on September 26, 2025.

Prior sales and revenue

This property was sold by Emigrant Bank for $135 million to Vanbarton Group on September 29, 2025.

The 304,525-square-foot property generated revenue of $17.6 million or $58 per square foot, according to the most recent income and expense figures.

Violations and lawsuits

According to city public data, the property has received $2,225 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 Grand Central, The majority, or 83 percent of the 44.4 million square feet of commercial built space are office buildings, with hotel buildings next occupying 8 percent of the space. In sales, Grand Central has the 7th highest sale turnover among other neighborhoods in the city with $1.5 billion in sales volume in the last two years. For development, Grand Central is the 7th most active neighborhood among other neighborhoods. It had 9.3 million square feet of commercial and multi-family construction under development in the last two years, which represents 21 percent of the neighborhood’s built space.

The block

On this tax block, PincusCo has identified the owners of five of the seven commercial properties representing 3,092,336 square feet of the 3,167,811 square feet. The largest owner is Munich Re, followed by National Pension Service Of Korea and then Stawski Partners. On the tax block, there was one new building construction project filed totaling 1,298,506 square feet. It is a 1,298,506 square-foot business (B) building submitted by SL Green Realty and filed by Harry Olsen with plans filed September 1, 2015 and permitted July 31, 2017.

The owner

The PincusCo database currently indicates that Vanbarton Group owned at least 20 commercial properties with 1,113 residential units in New York City with 3,460,817 square feet and a city-determined market value of $1.2 billion. (Market value is typically about 50% of actual value.) The portfolio has $1.9 billion in debt, with top three lenders as Blackstone Group, Blackstone Mortgage Trust, and Equitable Financial Life Insurance Company respectively. Within the portfolio, the bulk, or 68 percent of the 3,460,817 square feet of built space are office properties, with specialty properties next occupying 12 percent of the space. The bulk, or 95 percent of the built space, is in Manhattan, with Bronx next at 5 percent of the space.

The surrounding

Within a 400-foot radius of 9 East 42 Street, PincusCo identified two commercial real estate items of interests occurred over the past 24 months. One of those two items was a sale which Barings bought the 558,735-square-foot, 214-unit office building (O4) on 340 Madison Avenue for $161.3 million from RXR Realty and Ontario Pension Board on March 14, 2025. One of those two items was a loan which Wharton Properties, Aurora Capital Associates, and ACHS Management borrowed $10 million from NongHyup Bank secured by the 125,632-square-foot, two-unit office building (O6) on 511 5th Avenue on April 18, 2024.

Direct link to the property’s ACRIS page and link to DOB NOW portal.