CBRE Signs Deal To Open New Global Financial HQ On Park Avenue
The world’s largest commercial real estate services firm is opening a new headquarters for its investment activities in Midtown Manhattan.
CBRE is establishing a global financial headquarters at Lever House, a 21-story midcentury modern office tower just up the road from where its New York brokerage operation is based at 200 Park Ave.
The Dallas-based firm signed a 64K SF lease with Brookfield Properties and WatermanClark, who own the 1952-built office tower at 390 Park Ave. and completed a $100M renovation project last year.
CBRE leased six contiguous floors in the 270K SF building, which became New York City’s first modernist landmark in 1982. The brokerage is expected to move into the space, which will be designed and operated by coworking operator Industrious in the final quarter of 2025.
“Lever House is a premier address that will help us to attract top real estate finance talent,” CBRE Chairman and CEO Bob Sulentic said in a statement.
Four floors of the space will be home to CBRE Investment Management’s headquarters, CBRE’s chief financial officer and various other corporate functions, such as parts of the company focused on capital markets through mergers and acquisitions-based activity and co-investments in real estate and other assets.
Two floors will be an Industrious flex space targeted at senior executives, and CBRE would be able to occupy that space if it needs to in the future, Industrious CEO and co-founder Jamie Hodari told Bisnow in an email.
CBRE, which bought a 35% stake in Industrious in 2021, will collect the profits from that flex space. Sulentic described the agreement with Industrious as a “first-of-its-kind operating model.”
“This is a new kind of HQ space, where there is a fixed lease directly adjacent to a flexible space,” Hodari said. “They get a much more actively managed Financial HQ (events, programming, food and beverage) in keeping with what employees want today, and the ability to grow into space over time if they want to, rather than needing to perfectly predict their headcount 7 years out."
CBRE’s Silvio Petriello repped the brokerage in-house in the transaction. John Maher, Peter Turchin, Caroline Merck, Alex Benisatto, William Hooks and Maxwell Tarter, also of CBRE, represented the landlords.
WatermanClark and Brookfield's renovation included a revamped lobby, modernized building systems and a public plaza on the ground floor.
Brookfield Properties Executive Vice President Callie Haines said in a statement that 15 of the building’s 21 floors have been leased out since the redevelopment’s completion.
CBRE’s New York Tri-State advisory services business, plus its New York-based global workplace solutions teams, will stay put at 200 Park, while its global corporate headquarters will remain at 2121 North Pearl St. in Dallas.
