Metropolitan College to Sell Lower Manhattan Campus to CUNY for $40M

The Metropolitan College of New York (MCNY) has potentially found a buyer for the planned sale of its Lower Manhattan campus.

The City University of New York (CUNY) has signed a letter of intent to purchase the Financial District campus, which includes a 110,000-square-foot space at 40 Rector Street, for $40 million, according to a Tuesday regulatory filing from MCNY. A CUNY spokesperson said in a statement to Commercial Observer, however, that “negotiations on a potential purchase remain ongoing.”

If the deal closes, MCNY will use the proceeds from the sale to pay off its outstanding bonds and past debt payments, which it intentionally defaulted on last November, as Commercial Observer previously reported.

The spokesperson for CUNY said the school would use the commercial condominium units on the Financial District campus “as an option for a temporary location” for its Hunter-Bellevue School of Nursing while construction occurs on its Science Park and Research Campus Kips Bay, or SPARC Kips Bay. That Kips Bay campus will ultimately become a permanent home for the nursing school and the rest of CUNY’s schools.

A spokesperson for MCNY did not immediately respond to a request for comment, while Cushman & Wakefield, which acted as MCNY’s broker in the deal, declined to comment.

MCNY put the campus up for sale in October 2024 as part of a “forbearance agreement” with bondholders to skip its November 2024 debt payment on about $60 million of outstanding debt, according to Bloomberg, which first reported the news.

MCNY’s space at 40 Rector Street has 16 classrooms, 59 offices, two computer labs, a library, a student lounge and four conference rooms, CO reported.

A spokesperson for MCNY also told CO in October that the college “intends to consolidate operations on the remaining floors of its Manhattan campus, the Bronx campus and elsewhere as needed based on the details of the sale.” MCNY’s Bronx campus is at 463 East 149th Street in the South Bronx, according to its website.

News of the potential deal comes during a busy time for CUNY. Just this month, the school acquired six condominium units, or six floors, at the former DoubleTree by Hilton hotel at 569 Lexington Avenue from Hawkins Way Capital for $125.6 million, as CO previously reported. CUNY will use the hotel’s 235 rooms as dorms.

Isabelle Durso can be reached at idurso@commercialobserver.com.