230 Fifth Owners Opening 15K-SF Rooftop Bar at 520 Eighth Avenue
By Mark Hallum February 13, 2024 12:16 pm
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Rooftop Hospitality Group is ordering a double of its 230 Fifth Rooftop Bar.
The company signed a 20-year, 15,000-square-foot lease to open a second rooftop bar at GFP Real Estate’s 520 Eighth Avenue in early 2025, according to the landlord.
A GFP spokesperson declined to provide the asking rent for the rooftop space. The average office asking rent in Midtown, however, was $82.89 per square foot in the fourth quarter of 2023, a CBRE report noted, while retail rents averaged $1,359 per square foot in the nearby Broadway and Seventh Avenue corridor between West 42nd and West 47th streets, according to the Real Estate Board of New York.
The asking rent for the space was more than conventional office rent, but less than what retail usually rents for, according to a spokesperson for GFP.
Rooftop Hospitality has run a 33,000-square-foot rooftop watering hole at GFP’s 230 Fifth Avenue since 2006. When the tenant was in talks to renew its lease at 230 Fifth, it started discussions with GFP to “expand its business” and open another venue, said GFP Executive Managing Director David Kaye.
“Excited by the concept, GFP looked at its portfolio and identified 520 Eighth as the perfect fit for a new rooftop restaurant and amenity space due to its proximity to [transit hubs],” Kaye, who represented both the landlord and tenant with GFP’s Matthew Mandell, said in a statement.
520 Eighth Avenue sits on Eighth Avenue between West 36th and West 37th streets, about three blocks from Penn Station and four blocks south of the Port Authority Bus Terminal.
Also leasing space in the 26-story 520 Eighth, constructed in 1926, is nonprofit theater company The Barrow Group, which expanded to 19,000 square feet in January; the Alliance of Resident Theatres/New York, which signed a 32,000-square-foot renewal in August 2022; and Ripley-Grier Studios, which renewed the lease on its 62,257-square-foot rehearsal space in May 2022.
Mark Hallum can be reached at mhallum@commercialobserver.com.
