Empire Management Sells Midtown Office Building to Sioni Group for $21M
By Isabelle Durso March 6, 2025 11:31 am
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Empire Management has offloaded a 22-story Midtown office building it has owned since 2000, according to city records made public Wednesday.
Gateway Realty, an affiliate of Empire, sold the property at 363 Seventh Avenue for $21.3 million to the Sioni Group, which used the entity 363 7th, records show.
Empire founder and CEO Fred Ohebshalom signed for the seller, while Sioni’s Payman Yadidi signed for the buyer, according to records.
It’s unclear who brokered the deal. Empire declined to comment, while a spokesperson for Sioni did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The New York Business Journal first reported the news.
363 Seventh Avenue sits on the corner of Seventh Avenue and West 30th Street, roughly a block from Madison Square Garden and Penn Station. Empire bought the 83,642-square-foot building in May 2000, according to property records, which did not show a sales price for that deal.
Current tenants of the building include immigration and business law firm Kulen Law Firm, neurologist Modern Migraine and restaurant Fresh & Co. in the ground-floor retail space.
Sioni’s plans for the property are unclear, but the purchase comes just a few months after the developer filed plans to convert the nearby shuttered Stewart Hotel at 371 Seventh Avenue into 625 residential units, as Commercial Observer previously reported.
But Bob Knakal’s BKREA, which listed 363 Seventh Avenue for sale, said the property “is not zoned for conversion to residential.”
“363 Seventh Avenue generated tremendous interest,” Knakal told CO. “We had 68 property tours and generated 39 offers during the marketing process. The thought that Class B assets are not in high demand is simply not true.”
And while Empire offloaded a piece of its Midtown portfolio, it also picked up two other properties at a steal. The company bought 229 West 36th Street and 256 West 38th Street for just over $50 million, a huge discount from the $157 million seller Investcorp acquired them for in 2017.
Isabelle Durso can be reached at idurso@commercialobserver.com.
