Adam Flatto

Before COVID hit, Adam Flatto’s plan for the upstairs floors of his company’s 10-story, 505,000-square-foot, mixed-use redevelopment of the Packard Motors Building at 787 11th Avenue was for conventional office space. After COVID hit, Flatto smartly pivoted to life sciences.

“We knew that life science would be an area which had demand irrespective of COVID,” said Flatto, who soon leased three floors in the building totaling 165,000 square feet — or more than the total amount of life sciences space leased across New York City in 2020, according to Georgetown — to the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai.

“The building is now a hundred percent leased, and Mount Sinai is going to be building out its new facility over the next two to three years,” Flatto said.

Georgetown’s employees have been back in the office full time since September, with precautions that include weekly COVID tests. Given how busy the company has been, with 10 active developments around the country in 2020, it sounds like they need all hands on deck.

In Washington, D.C., the company is developing Four Seasons Private Residences at 1051 29th Street NW, a 70-unit, “extremely high-end, luxury condominium project” adjoining the Four Seasons hotel, according to Flatto. This will be designed by architect Adjaye Associates, and accompanied by a 1-acre public park that landscape architect OLIN is crafting.

Georgetown is also completing the PGA Tour’s new 187,000-square-foot, Foster + Partners-designed global headquarters, which will consolidate PGA Tour’s entire 800-plus staff under one roof in Ponte Vedra Beach, Fla.

Looking ahead, the company has several major developments, including a 1 million-square-foot, full-block, mixed-use development site on the block between 29th and 30th streets and 11th and 12th avenues in Manhattan.

“We continue to believe that as we come out of COVID, companies will be even more interested in large-footprint, large-scale, open areas, where they can lay out and work in a post-COVID world of terraces and operable windows,” Flatto said. “I see New York coming back in a very strong way.”—L.G.