NEW YORK | 346 Madison Ave | FT | 41 FLOORS

[NYguy]

https://therealdeal.com/2021/01/21/b...wn-east-tower/

Brooks Brothers’ Madison Ave store could give way to Midtown East tower
Claudio Del Vecchio looking to sell 700K sf development site


Jan. 21, 2021
By Rich Bockmann

The Brooks Brothers store at 346 Madison Avenue is being offered up as a development site that could be transformed into a 41-story, 700,000-square-foot tower, sources familiar with the offering told The Real Deal.

The site is hitting the market after the iconic menswear brand — initially battered by changing trends, and dealt a final blow by the pandemic and the move to work-from-home — filed for bankruptcy last year. A partnership of Simon Property Group and Authentic Brands bought the 200-year-old company out of bankruptcy in August for $325 million and announced plans to close 75 of its 200 stores.

The brand’s flagship at the corner of Madison Avenue and East 44th Street, however, is still owned by Claudio Del Vecchio, the Italian billionaire who had owned Brooks Brothers since 2001.

Del Vecchio hired a JLL team of David Giancola, Andrew Scandalios and Bob Knakal to market the site for sale, sources said. It includes the Brooks Brothers store and an office building at 11 East 44th Street, which Del Vecchio bought in 2019 for $109 million. The pricing expectation wasn’t available, but if the site sold for $500 per square foot or more — a figure brokers said could be expected for the area — it could reach upwards of $350 million.

A representative for Del Vecchio could not be immediately reached, and a spokesperson for the brokers declined to comment.

[Crawford]

Yet another Grand Central-area supertall or near-supertall. With the transferable development rights, I think this ends up much bigger than 700k square feet.

I knew this site would eventually be redeveloped. I just hope there's a new Brooks Brothers flagship at the base of the new tower. The current flagship is enormous, and a gem.

[NYguy]

With an assemblage, this would be site 4. It has a 23 FAR.

[Crawford]

It's a decent sized footprint, when you include the adjacent 11 E. 44th, which is part of the assemblage. It's also clear this has been in planning for some time, given they bought the adjacent site two years ago.

Hopefully we get an iconic tower.

[NYguy]

Originally Posted by Crawford

It's a decent sized footprint, when you include the adjacent 11 E. 44th, which is part of the assemblage. It's also clear this has been in planning for some time, given they bought the adjacent site two years ago.

Hopefully we get an iconic tower.

Together, that makes up about half the footprint of site four, the southern half. The full site would have a footprint slightly larger than One Vanderbilt. With a 23 Fat, you would get a tower of about 1.1 msf of office space, minus any mechanical space.