Billionaire Jon Stryker Buys Three 445 Fifth Avenue Retail Condos for $22M

Billionaire philanthropist Jon Stryker, an heir to the Stryker Corporation medical tech company fortune, now owns the entire commercial portion of a Fifth Avenue building following a recent deal.

Stryker, through the entity 445 5th Retail, has purchased three retail condominium units at 445 Fifth Avenue from Torchlight Investors, which used the entity DOF VI 445 Fifth, for $21.6 million, according to city records made public Friday.

Mark O’Donnell, who has done nonprofit work with Stryker in the past, signed the deal for the buyer, while Gianluca Montalti, head of asset management at Torchlight, signed for the seller, records show.

It’s unclear who brokered the deal. Spokespeople for the Arcus Foundation — Stryker’s international grantmaking organization — Torchlight, and Ripco Real Estate, which is marketing the building’s retail space, did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Torchlight originally acquired the retail units at 445 Fifth Avenue for $40 million in September 2023, property records show. Current tenants of the property’s retail units include design agency Brickworks Design Studio in 16,171 square feet as well as cafe Toastique.

With the latest deal, Stryker now owns all 11 commercial condo units in the 33-story tower overlooking Bryant Park, which also has 174 residential units on the top floors, according to StreetEasy.

The billionaire began buying in the building in 2019 on floors eight and nine for about $10.8 million each, according to PincusCo, which first reported news of the most recent buyer and seller. In 2021, Stryker bought six more commercial office condo units at the building from the New York Public Library for $38 million, PincusCo reported.

Despite selling its ownership stake in the building years ago, the New York Public Library still leases about 74,000 square feet of space at the property for the Stavros Niarchos Foundation Library, its largest circulating branch, Crain’s New York Business reported. Stryker’s own Arcus Foundation is also an office tenant at 445 Fifth Avenue.

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