Boutique Manhattan Office Tower Tops Out

28 & 7. Rendering courtesy of GDSNY and Klövern

Companies have been slow to return to their offices in New York City, but that hasn’t stopped a cross-border development duo from forging ahead on a new, boutique office tower in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood. The 12-story project, 28 & 7, recently topped out ahead of schedule and is set for completion in late 2021.

Sweden’s Klövern AB and New York City-based GDS Development are building the Class A tower at 322-326 7th Ave., adjacent to the Fashion Institute of Technology and just south of Penn Station, with Hudson Yards to the northwest. The pair of developers broke ground on the project late last year. Triton Construction serves as the general contractor.

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Designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, the building will offer 100,000 square feet of leasable office space with floor-to-floor heights of 13 feet and column-free workspaces spanning up to 40 feet. The property, designed to achieve LEED Silver and WELL certification, will be equipped with cutting-edge mechanical systems, carbon dioxide monitoring, triple-glazed windows and natural lighting. The 12th-floor penthouse will feature a landscaped outdoor terrace.

Laying beams in NYC

28 & 7 under construction. Image courtesy of GDSNY and Klövern

Klövern is one of Sweden’s largest listed real estate firms, with nearly 350 properties totaling around 27 million square feet of lettable area. All of its New York City projects are being built in collaboration with real estate developer GDSNY, headed by architect Michael Kirchmann and Alan Rudikoff.

A few blocks away from 28 & 7, the team is co-developing 1245 Broadway, a 23-story, 200,000-square-foot Class A office tower that recently topped out. The property is located at the corner of 31st Street and Broadway in the NoMad neighborhood. Klövern and GDSNY are also working on a 10-story, 131,320-square-foot office project at 118 10^th Ave.

CBRE, which is marketing 28 & 7, reported that 12.9 million square feet of new office projects were under construction in Manhattan at the close of the second quarter, with delivery dates through year-end 2023. New York City’s moratorium on non-essential construction from March 27 to June 8 had little impact on the delivery timeline for the borough’s major office developments.

Office leasing activity in Manhattan plunged by 44 percent year-over-year in the first half of 2020 to 8.3 million square feet, including just 2.2 million square feet in the second quarter, but the market began to unfreeze in June. The tech industry accounted for 19 percent of total leasing activity in the second quarter, including TikTok’s 232,000-square-foot lease in Times Square and Match Group’s 45,000-square-foot commitment in the Meatpacking District.