The Plan: 99 Park Avenue Returns to Its Art Deco Roots in Midtown

It’s a homecoming for 99 Park Avenue.

Global Holdings is returning its 26-story, 600,000-square-foot Class A office tower to its roots with a $30 million repositioning focused on bringing the building’s classic Art Deco architecture back into the design of its lobby and amenities.

Led by architecture firm Vocon, upgrades at 99 Park include a complete redesign of the building’s double-height lobby and storefront, as well as a new roughly 5,600-square-foot amenity
center called Below Park. The hospitality-inspired amenity center features a speakeasy-style lounge, conference and meeting facilities, a golf simulator, a bowling alley and a barbershop. There’s also a newly upgraded 1,900-square-foot fitness center.

Construction on the project began roughly 18 months ago, and Global Holdings is on track for its targeted opening date within the second quarter of this year.

“[The amenity space] gives people the option of coming to a space where it doesn’t feel like a corporate office environment,” said Jesse Embley, vice president of design and construction at Global Holdings. “We hope that people will enjoy the space and will recognize the nods to Art Deco and to the heritage of the building.”

Built in 1953 along a full block of Park Avenue between East 39th and East 40th streets, 99 Park was originally designed by Emery Roth & Sons in that Art Deco style. Vocon’s renovation pays homage to the era through subtle upgrades to columns and glass, warm wooden tones, and custom-made light fixtures in the updated lobby.

“The previous lobby had gone through so many layers of iteration, it kind of just didn’t really have an identity,” said Sofia Juperius, a design director and a senior associate at Vocon. “I think we found a true identity and personality that really suited the building.”

Embley said the updated lobby and new amenity center will help attract tenants for the building’s remaining space, as well as retain the property’s current tenants, which include Amalgamated Bank, Southern Land Company and Metropolitan Commercial Bank. (The building is 97 percent leased.)

“The success at 99 Park Avenue reflects a philosophy we have refined over decades: that the same design and experiential standards we bring to residential and hospitality spaces belong in the workplace,” said Eyal Ofer, chairman and founder of Global Holdings.

Those new hospitality-focused spaces and amenities all reflect 99 Park’s history and original architecture.

“There is that moment of time that we want to be honoring, and then that folds in and modernizes it to the place where we want to be,” said Nancy Kayoung Nam, a design director at Vocon. “That was a deliberate, thoughtful design.”

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