Wells Fargo may be buying the former Neiman Marcus upscale department store space at Manhattan’s Hudson Yards for about $550 million to turn it into offices, a deal that would rank as one of the largest commercial property transactions in New York this year.
Wells Fargo is purchasing about 400,000 square feet across three floors at 20 Hudson Yards from developers Related Cos. and Oxford Properties, Bloomberg News and the Financial Times reported. The deal is said to be completed soon with the developers still owning the rest of the property.
The building is part of the massive $25 billion mixed-use Hudson Yards project, featuring office, hotel and residential towers. Hudson Yards is billed as the largest U.S. private real estate development.
The transaction, being made as rising interest rates have seized investment deal flows, would rank as what CoStar data shows to be the fourth-largest commercial property transaction this year in New York and the sixth largest in the country.
Wells Fargo and Oxford declined to comment to CoStar News. Spokespeople for Related and Newmark, whose brokers Bloomberg said are handling the transaction, didn’t immediately respond to CoStar's requests to comment.
Wells Fargo already has a major footprint at the megadevelopment on Manhattan’s far west side. The San Francisco-based banking giant also owns and occupies about 440,000 square feet at 30 Hudson Yards, CoStar data shows.
Hudson Yards, benefiting from the so-called flight to quality of well-resourced companies seeking new or renovated top-tier properties to attract and keep talent, counts among other office occupants private equity firm KKR. That firm earlier this year signed a lease spanning about 220,000 square feet at 30 Hudson Yards to double its already sizable footprint at the complex. The investment firm owns a majority stake in the building’s popular Edge observation deck after a 2021 purchase.
50 Hudson Yards, billed as the fourth-largest office building in New York and biggest to debut during the pandemic, counts investment giant BlackRock and Facebook parent Meta as its two largest tenants.
Neiman Marcus shut its location at 20 Hudson Yards in 2020 after filing for bankruptcy, just a year after the store opened to much fanfare to mark the luxury retailer’s first location in the city. The space is said to have been vacant since then.