Fisher Brothers Nabs $575M Refinance on Park Avenue Plaza in Midtown
By Mack Burke October 28, 2021 3:57 pm
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Fisher Brothers has scored a $575 million debt package to refinance its 44-story Midtown office building, Park Avenue Plaza, a skyscraper the firm has owned since building it in 1980, according to ratings agency analysis of the deal.
Morgan Stanley originated the $460 million 10-year, interest-only first mortgage, which was accompanied by a $115 million mezzanine loan, the provider of which wasn’t immediately clear, according to information from Moody’s Investors Service, which analyzed the deal.
A $260 million portion of the $460 million whole loan is in line to be securitized in a single-asset, single-borrower commercial mortgage-backed securities transaction, collateralized by the new mortgage on Fisher Brothers’ fee simple interest in the roughly 1.2 million-square-foot property at 55 East 52nd Street, per Moody’s.
A representative for Morgan Stanley did not respond to an inquiry, and Fisher Brothers declined to comment or provide additional information on the deal.
The office building is 99 percent leased to a collection of tenants whose weighted average remaining lease term is more than 16 years, according to Moody’s, which said that the property has averaged an occupancy of over 99 percent since 2011, led by many long-term lease agreements.
Some of the larger tenants at the location include Morgan Stanley, Evercore and Intercontinental Exchange — the latter two use the property as their headquarters — and BlackRock, which will be moving to 50 Hudson Yards after using 12 floors within Park Avenue Plaza for its headquarters. Fisher Brothers announced in March that it was able to nab asset management firm Jennison Associates to fill almost 121,000 square feet that BlackRock will leave for Hudson Yards at lease expiration in April 2023.
Jennison Associates will take four floors of space that will be vacated by BlackRock — floors 24 through 27, representing $10.6 million in base rent — with plans to fully move in in 2024 or 2025, according to Moody’s and previous information provided by Fisher Brothers.
The year that BlackRock is set to vacate is a big one for the property, when it comes to lease expirations. BlackRock and Aon are currently scheduled to abandon more than 638,000 square feet, combined. Aon is subleasing its space to three tenants — investment firms General Atlantic and Court Square and Evercore — all of which have “direct lease agreements” in place to take the space from Aon when its lease expires, according to Moody’s.
Even with those major desertions, the property has had some strong leasing activity recently — including the Jennison Associates lease — that will help buoy occupancy levels, per Moody’s.
Fisher Brothers has brought in Jennison and is “engaged in discussions with tenants currently occupying portions of the property and expects to lease all of the remaining BlackRock space to such tenants prior to the BlackRock lease expiration date,” according to Moody’s.
Designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, the property’s floor plates near the base clock in at around 45,000 square feet each and they narrow to about 30,000 square feet further up the tower, Moody’s indicated. The asset also includes a glass atrium lobby and ground-floor retail space.
Fisher Brothers has maintained the property well since opening it more than 40 years ago, per Moody’s, which characterized the asset’s condition as “excellent.” The developer has invested about $39 million in capital expenditures, including lobby upgrades and tenant improvements (TI), at the property since January 2020.
Mack Burke can be reached at mburke@commercialobserver.com.
