Vanbarton to Buy 6 East 43rd Street for About $140M for Potential Resi Conversion
By Isabelle Durso May 20, 2025 2:13 pm
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Vanbarton Group isn’t slowing down anytime soon when it comes to residential conversions.
The developer is in contract to buy the 27-story office tower at 6 East 43rd Street from Milstein Properties for about $140 million, according to a source with knowledge of the deal.
Vanbarton plans to convert the roughly 300,000-square-foot office property — which is currently home to the Milstein family’s Emigrant Bank offices — into 450 to 500 rental apartment units, according to The Real Deal, which first reported the news.
Other current tenants of the building between Madison and Fifth avenues include law firm Constantine Cannon and restaurant T-Squared Social in the ground-floor retail space.
The deal is expected to close in the fall, TRD reported. Eastdil Secured’s Gary Phillips and Will Silverman brokered the deal.
Eastdil declined to comment, while a spokesperson for Vanbarton did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for Milstein could not be reached.
News of the deal comes during a busy time for Vanbarton, which is in the process of converting two other Manhattan properties into residential buildings.
In September, Vanbarton went into contract to buy the 26-story Financial District office tower at 77 Water Street from Sage for roughly $95 million, with plans to turn the property into as many as 600 residential units, as Commercial Observer previously reported.
And, in October, the company was in talks to buy the Archdiocese of New York’s former headquarters at 1011 First Avenue for as much as $100 million to turn it into residential units, CO reported.
Vanbarton finalized plans for that conversion earlier this month, proposing to expand the existing 20-story Catholic Church building into a 26-story, 420-unit residential property.
The developer’s new deal at 6 East 43rd Street is also close to the major conversion of the former Pfizer headquarters at 219 and 235 East 42nd Street into roughly 1,600 rental apartments, spearheaded by Metro Loft Management and David Werner Real Estate Investments.
Isabelle Durso can be reached at idurso@commercialobserver.com.
