New York City – Cushman & Wakefield announced today that it represented St. John’s University in the sale of its Manhattan campus property at 101 Murray Street in Tribeca for $223 million to a partnership between Fisher Brothers and The Witkoff Group. This groundbreaking transaction represents the largest residential development site sale in Lower Manhattan and a record price for the area.
“Cushman & Wakefield has done an extraordinary job, with a first-rate team, representing us in the sale of our current Manhattan campus property,” said Martha Hirst, Executive Vice President, Chief Operating Officer and Treasurer at St. John’s University. “The University takes great pride in our presence in New York City, and the overwhelming success of this transaction allows us to ensure the strength of that presence for generations of St. John’s students to come.”
Located on the northeast corner of Murray and West Streets, 101 Murray Street offers the rare opportunity to construct a brand new, visionary residential project with a coveted Tribeca address. The site provides an expansive 31,028 square-foot footprint that affords maximum design flexibilities in order to build an elegant residential tower. The underlying zoning provides no height restriction, allowing the developer to maximize ceiling heights and enhance the potential for breathtaking panoramic views, while also offering other top-of-the-line amenities to create New York’s next iconic residence.
The site allows for the development of a residential building totaling 310,028 square feet as-of-right, with the potential to increase the development bulk to 372,336 square feet through available floor area bonuses.
A Cushman & Wakefield New York Capital Markets team of Helen Hwang, Nat Rockett, Karen Wiedenmann, Steve Kohn, and Michael Rotchford, represented St. John’s in the transaction.
“101 Murray Street is a development site like no other in Manhattan with the potential to become a truly world-class residence,” said Hwang, an Executive Vice President. “We are privileged to have helped St. John’s University successfully realize such an important transaction for its academic mission.”
The 10-story property currently serves as a “vertical campus” for the University’s respected School of Risk Management, a division of The Peter J. Tobin College of Business. The University will continue occupancy of the Manhattan campus until mid-2014 and has plans to identify another centrally-located space in Manhattan in time for the start of the 2014-15 academic year to house the Tobin College of Business School of Risk Management, the Global Studies language programs, and other academic initiatives.