New Museum to Open Temporary 250 Bowery Office During Redevelopment
By Abigail Nehring May 20, 2024 8:09 pm
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The New Museum will move its administrative offices into a temporary home while it completes a 60,000-square-foot expansion of its flagship building on the Bowery, Commercial Observer has learned.
The museum inked a deal for 5,850 square feet in a commercial condominium on the ground floor of 250 Bowery, according to landlord Delancey Street Associates.
The New Museum’s administrative staff plan to occupy the space “during the transition” to the newly redeveloped museum across the street at 235 Bowery, the museum’s director, Lisa Phillips, said in a statement.
“The New Museum’s identity is deeply connected to the Bowery and we welcome the opportunity to have this temporary base at 250 Bowery as we focus on completing our expansion,” Phillips said.
For now, its museum will remain closed until early 2025, when it anticipates completing construction at 235 Bowery, its home since 2007, according to the museum’s website.
A spokesperson for Delancey Street declined to share the terms of the deal, saying only that it was a “short-term” lease. Average asking rent for office space in the neighborhood was $79.11 per square foot in the first quarter of 2024, according to a Cushman & Wakefield report.
There were no brokers involved, the spokesperson said.
The ground-floor condo unit of 250 Bowery has changed hands twice in recent years, triggered in part by Delancey Street’s Essex Crossing project on the Lower East Side.
The International Center for Photography (ICP) bought the unit for $23.5 million in 2015 from Tristar Capital, but quickly departed just a few years later for 40,000 square feet at 242 Broome Street in Essex Crossing.
Delancey Street Associates — a joint venture of Taconic Partners, L+M Development Partners, BFC Partners, the Prusik Group and Goldman Sachs Asset Management’s Urban Investment Group — then bought the commercial condominium from ICP in 2019 for $25 million.
“Our spaces empower innovative organizations like New Museum, which for 45 years has served as a hub for new art and new ideas, and as a catalyst for dialogue between contemporary artists and the public,” BFC Managing Partner Don Capoccia said in a statement.
Abigail Nehring can be reached at anehring@commercialobserver.com.
