New York's Chrysler Building is changing hands again. On October 7, developer Tishman Speyer and landowner The Cooper Union announced they have finalized a 150-year ground lease agreement for the Art Deco landmark, returning the tower to the company that ran it from 1997 to 2019. The deal comes with a revitalization plan worth $235 million, covering building upgrades and lease payments.
The agreement, announced in a joint press release, ends nearly two years of uncertainty over the fate of 405 Lexington Avenue. The New York Times reported the same day that Tishman Speyer plans to refurbish the tower's office floors and add amenities, aiming to restore some of the luster the building has lost in recent years.
Crain's New York Business put the price tag of the comeback at $235 million in upgrades and rent. The return marks a striking reversal: in 2019, Tishman Speyer and the Abu Dhabi Investment Council sold the leasehold to RFR Holding and Austria's Signa Holding for $151 million — a fraction of the $800 million the Abu Dhabi fund had paid for a 90 percent stake in 2008.
The RFR-Signa era collapsed quickly. Signa went bankrupt, and RFR stopped paying ground rent in May 2024. Unpaid rent piled up to roughly $21 million, and a New York court terminated RFR's lease, handing control back to Cooper Union. The college then hired Savills to market the property, running a bidding process that lasted more than a year.
Tishman Speyer emerged as the winner. Commercial Observer reported months ago that the firm had entered exclusive negotiations with Cooper Union after multiple bidding rounds, and Bloomberg noted that the deal would need approval from the New York State Attorney General's office.
At the heart of the saga is the unusual ownership structure. The Chrysler Building itself is investor-owned, but the land beneath it has belonged to Cooper Union since 1902, when it was donated by descendants of industrialist Peter Cooper. Whoever controls the tower must pay the college ground rent — and the 2006 lease reset made that rent punishing.
Annual ground rent jumped from $7.75 million in 2017 to $32.5 million in 2018, and is set to rise to $41 million in 2028 and $55 million in 2038. That escalating bill is why RFR and Signa could buy the leasehold for just $151 million in 2019 — and why even that "bargain" proved unworkable as Midtown office rents softened, maintenance bills mounted, and tenants complained about elevator outages and pest problems.
Completed in 1930 and briefly the world's tallest building, the 77-story, roughly one-million-square-foot tower sits on 42nd Street next to Grand Central Terminal. It is currently about 14 percent vacant, with tenants including law firm Moses & Singer and Creative Artists Agency.
Tishman Speyer has revived this building before. After buying it for $220 million in 1997, the firm spent $100 million on renovations and lifted occupancy from 75 percent to 95 percent, according to the Times. Whether history repeats itself depends on the details still to come: neither side has disclosed the rent terms of the new 150-year lease, and the full renovation program is expected to be unveiled in the coming months.