MetLife Keeping Its 400K-SF Offices in Namesake Tower
By Nicholas Rizzi December 21, 2023 4:48 pm
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MetLife won’t take its name off the MetLife Building anytime soon.
The insurance company signed an 11-year extension for its 400,000-square-foot headquarters spread across five floors of the 200 Park Avenue tower, Bloomberg first reported.
MetLife currently occupies the entire third and sixth floors of the 59-story tower near Grand Central Terminal along with parts of the mezzanine, fourth and fifth floors, according to landlords Irvine Company and Tishman Speyer. The new deal will keep the company in the space until 2038.
A spokesperson for the building’s ownership declined to provide the asking rent, but average asking rents in the Grand Central submarket were $67.69 per square foot in the third quarter of 2023, according to a Cushman & Wakefield (CWK) report.
The insurance company first took control of 200 Park in 1981 when it bought it from Pan American Airways for $400 million, The New York Times reported. Pan Am’s logo stayed on the building until 1992, when MetLife replaced the shuttered airline’s name with its own, the Chicago Tribune reported.
MetLife owned the property until 2005, when it sold it to Tishman and Irvine for a then-record $1.72 billion, according to the Times. It kept offices in the property after the sale and signed a lease in 2015 to consolidate three of its New York City locations to its namesake building, the New York Post reported.
“MetLife’s continued presence at 200 Park Avenue is a testament to the connection between the iconic building and one of the world’s leading financial institutions,” Roger DeWames, Irvine’s executive vice president for offices, said in a statement. “We are proud to extend our partnership with MetLife as the next chapter of 200 Park begins.”
The renewal is the sixth largest office lease in New York City this year (being announced just after Commercial Observer compiled the deals) and the second 200 Park deal to be among the top 10. Law firm Paul Hastings renewed 256,840 square feet there.
Tishman Speyer’s Megan Sheehan and Sam Brodsky represented the landlords in-house while Patrick Murphy and Peyton Horn of C&W brokered it for MetLife.
A spokesperson for C&W did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Nicholas Rizzi can be reached at nrizzi@commercialobserver.com.
