Two New York towers put the finishing touches on major upgrades as they battle downtown blight

We know the bad news about downtown: offices 30% vacant, Water Street a ghost town nearby, and several old buildings facing closure. But there is even better news. And it’s not all at the World Trade Center and Brookfield Place.

Two large towers on Liberty Street escaped the worst damage of the pandemic, and their owners are putting the finishing touches on their continued success.

The first is at 28 Liberty St. – owned by Fosun Hive Holdings, the real estate division of Chinese conglomerate Fosun International. Fosun has gone from strength to strength at the 60-story, 2.5 million-square-foot tower since buying it from JPMorgan Chase for $750 million in 2017 and spending $160 million more on modernization.

The skyscraper, a designated city landmark, is more than 89% office leased and will soon hit the mid-90s when several pending deals are completed, according to Thomas Costanzo, a global partner of Fosun and CEO of Four Trees Asset Management. who runs the building.

Much of the retail space is also leased. Now, Fosun is turning its attention to the final piece of the puzzle—roughly 30,000 square feet for a flexible event space it’s calling Halo, located at the base of the tower, which can accommodate up to 750 guests.

Costanzo said Halo would complement the tower’s top-floor restaurant, Union Square Hospitality’s Manhatta, which does a booming event business.

The new venue, on the ground floor, is adjacent to the tower’s famous 2.5-hectare square, designed around sculptures, including Jean Dubuffet’s Group of Four Trees.

Costanzo said Halo, still partially under construction, is already booked for events, including one for this month’s Fashion Week, though he would not name the designer. Halo is led by Jason Berkeley, COO of Four Trees Capital Management
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After Chase left, Fosun attracted new tenants such as the New York State Attorney General’s office and AIG.

“We basically re-leased the entire building,” Costanzo said.

Asking office rents range from the mid-$50s to the mid-$70s per square foot.

The tower’s 200,000-square-foot retail space is home to a 45,000-square-foot, 15-screen Alamo Drafthouse cinema complex; a 20,000-square-foot indoor soccer facility called the Socceroof, and Court 16, a 13,000-square-foot tennis and pickleball clubhouse.

Hall became possible when a 2019 deal for a 30,000-square-foot food hall collapsed with the pandemic.

“The decision not to go ahead with another food hall was fortuitous,” Costanzo said, as the area now has many high-end food options.

Costanzo was optimistic about the rest of downtown.

“The market has always been challenged with historically higher vacancies than uptown, and the older stock certainly doesn’t help. But we will see more residential conversions and adaptive reuses,” he predicted.

Another success story can be found at One Liberty Plaza. Brookfield Properties’ 54-story, 2.3 million-square-foot black steel monolith at Broadway and Liberty Street, across from Zuccotti Park, is 83% leased to such notable tenants as Cleary Gottlieb, Aon, Transatlantic Reinsurance and New York City Economic Development Corp. .

The skyscraper received a $750 million refinancing package led by Morgan Stanley in June — paving the way for what Brookfield called at the time “significant capital improvements.”

Now, Brookfield has embarked on an ambitious project to modernize the tower’s sprawling lobbies. The redesign will boast new, double-height spaces with 40-metre-high ceilings and 17-metre-high windows, Italian travertine wall cladding, terrazzo floors and bespoke furniture by interior firm Gachot and works by French contemporary artist Pierre Huyghe.

The project, due for completion in early 2026, will be led by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, the original designer of the former American Steel Building.