NYC Department for the Aging Moving to 80K SF at 14 Wall Street

New York City’s senior services agency is on the move in Lower Manhattan.

The New York City Department for the Aging (DFTA) will decamp from the Court Square Building at 2 Lafayette Street and lease 80,000 square feet on floors 11, 12 and 14 of Alexander Rovt’s 14 Wall Street, according to an application by the Department of Citywide Administrative Services, which handles office leases for city agencies.

The terms of the deal are still in the works, pending public review of the DFTA’s application. But asking rent on the 20th floor of the 32-story building was $50 per square foot last year, as Commercial Observer previously reported.

It’s unclear if brokers are involved in the deal. A spokesperson for DCAS did not respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for CBRE (CBRE), the leasing agency at 14 Wall Street, declined to comment.

The Department for the Aging has had its home at the city-owned Court Square Building since the late 1980s, but claims in its application that it can’t use its 136,000 square feet there efficiently.

The building is overdue for renovations and tenants are hampered by its irregular floor plates, the department wrote in its application.

That’s especially worrisome since about 150 clients — mostly seniors — pass through the agency’s office every day to receive services. And the number of visitors is sure to increase as the city’s population skews older in the coming decades.

But the move to 14 Wall Street will solve those problems. 

“The more compact and modern layout of the office space at 14 Wall Street will be more suitable for agency operations than their current office layout,” the application said.

Some 329 full-time city employees and another 146 part-time employees will move to the new address if the application is approved. 

It would also give a boost to the Lower Manhattan office market, since the deal means the DFTA will start paying rent to a private landlord for the first time in nearly 40 years. 

Rovt, a self-made billionaire from Ukraine, bought a majority stake in the 840,000-square-foot building 12 years ago for $294.4 million.

As for the Court Square building, the city plans to renovate the soon-to-be vacant floors and welcome a new city agency to the property, according to DFTA’s application. The time frame for the work is unclear.

Abigail Nehring can be reached at anehring@commercialobserver.com.