Macquarie Opens 250 KSF Manhattan Office

October 4, 2024

Brookfield Properties owns the Fifth Avenue tower.

The newly renovated 660 Fifth Avenue building features Macquarie Group’s logo. Image courtesy of Macquarie Group

Macquarie Group has opened its new 250,000-square-foot office at 660 Fifth Ave. in Manhattan’s Plaza District.

The global financial services company has relocated its New York City office at Brookfield Properties’ 1.5 million square foot recently renovated building, adding its logo to the city skyline for the first time.

Macquarie worked on design with Architecture Plus Information. The lease was initially signed in 2022; the deal also marks 30 years for the firm’s operations in the U.S.

Macquarie Group occupies seven floors at 660 Fifth Ave. The new workplace features floor-to-ceiling windows, meeting and event rooms, lounges and cafe spaces, access to 25,000 square feet of terrace gardens and an open atrium staircase that connects all floors.

Brookfield Properties has been the owner of the 39-story building since 2018. The company purchased the majority stake for $1.4 billion from Kushner Cos., according to CommercialEdge.

A revamped office tower in Manhattan

Macquarie Group's office interiors at 660 Fifth Avenue — Architecture Plus Information designed Macquarie Group’s new office space. Image courtesy of Macquarie Group

Completed in 1957, the mid-century office building includes floorplates between 24,000 square feet and 78,000 square feet, 20 passenger elevators, covered parking spots and 84,855 square feet of first floor and second floor retail spaces.

The owner implemented a $400 million redevelopment project with Kohn Pedersen Fox as architect, resulting in a new facade with 11- by 19-foot single-pane glass units, the largest ones to be used on an office redevelopment in the city. Additional upgrades include a new lobby and elevators, as well as infrastructure services.

The owner is targeting LEED Gold certification for the base building and interior workplace, while the tower already received a WELL Health-Safety rating in 2022. The property was selected as one of the six inaugural commercial spaces for New York state’s Empire Building Challenge, a program for redesign approaches that focuses on reaching low-carbon retrofits for the city’s high-rise buildings.

Corporate relocations

Manhattan’s office vacancy rate stood at 16.6 percent as of August, marking an 80-basis-point drop year-over-year, according to a recent CommercialEdge office report. The rate was below the 19.4 percent national figure, while asking rates stood at $68.56 per square foot, the highest in the Northeast region.

Recent significant corporate relocations in Manhattan include IBM’s new 270,000-square-foot flagship office. The company signed the 16-year deal in 2022 at One Madison Avenue, a 1.4 million-square-foot office building owned by SL Green. The tenant moved all its New York departments at the property, which will host more than 2,000 of its employees.

In May, HSBC opened its 265,000-square-foot headquarters at The Spiral at Hudson Yards. The bank downsized from a 548,000-square-foot office and will now occupy three floors for the next 20 years at Tishman Speyer’s 66-story tower.