One of Midtown Madison Avenue’s dowdiest buildings is about to dress up and go out on the town.
Aby Rosen, who bought 477 Madison in July for $258 million through his RFR Holding, knows that the 24-story office tower’s glazed white brick facade fades to black amid the avenue’s more distinguished older and newer properties.
But when he’s done with an inside-and-out modernization, “You’ll suddenly see a building you never saw before,” the developer chuckled.
Rosen had previously called the 1953-vintage structure at East 51st Street a “diamond in the rough ready to be polished.”
But he shared the specifics with Realty Check for the first time.
Rosen aims to do a Cinderella job on the property as he has to several other older, under-utilized ones in Midtown South.
RFR plans to invest around $40 million in 477 Madison Ave. above the purchase price,
Most visible to the public will be a new, battleship-gray exterior.
The white brick won’t be replaced, but cloaked in a product called KEIM Mineral Stain Coating, which will look “almost like re-glazing,” he said.
The material refracts light for a luminous appearance and will give 477 Madison a hipper, slightly downtown appearance.
Rosen said 477 Madison’s 5,000 to 18,100 square-foot floors are ideal for an “eclectic” mix of tenants — such as smaller legal and financial firms and nonprofits — who will pay from $90 to $100 per square foot, “a great bargain” for a location across from the back of St. Patrick’s Cathedral, and a short stroll to Rockefeller Center.
“I’ve always made a good living from B properties in A locations,” Rosen said. “Giant, monster floor plates aren’t my game.”
The building is half-empty and several tenants are soon leaving, Rosen said. “The previous owners” — members of the famously squabbling Slifka family — “did no new leasing for the past few years.
“They did a new lobby, but we’ll take it to a new level,” he said — including installation of a Jeff Koons Bicycle Rack sculpture and Katherine Bernhardt paintings.
Improvements are also to include all-new windows, handsome landscaping on setback terraces and new mechanical systems.
New storefronts will add luster to about 10,000 square feet of retail space, where RFR will mostly ask for a reasonable $250 per square foot “and possibly $300 a foot on the corner,” Rosen said.
Rosen’s company owns or controls three large landmarks — the Chrysler Building, the Seagram Building and Lever House — as well as smaller ones such as 281 Park Avenue South, which has been entirely leased to Sweden’s Fotografiska photography museum to open this fall.