Flatiron Building to Be Transformed Into Luxury Condos and Retail Space

If you want to see the future of post-pandemic New York City, go to Madison Square Park and look up at the Flatiron Building. You'll see an iconic triangular structure that is about to morph from obsolete office space into state-of-the-art luxury condominiums, an emblem of a city scrambling to address a glut of office space alongside a chronic shortage of housing units.

A development team composed of GFP Real Estate, the Brodsky Organization and the Sorgente Group plans to build 60 residential units at the Flatiron Building and finish the project by 2026, according to a rezoning application Brodsky recently filed with the Department of City Planning, Crain's reports.

The project will largely consist of interior renovations and minor changes to the facade, and it will not involve demolishing or expanding the property, according to the application. The finished project will feature about 5,000 square feet of ground-floor retail space in addition to the condos.

The 200,000-square-foot Flatiron Building has been nearly empty since 2019, when Macmillan Publishing, which had been there since 2004, vacated the premises. The sole remaining tenant is a T-Mobile store on the first floor, which will likely depart before construction begins.

While the conversion of office space into residential units is a growing trend, the transfer of ownership of the Flatiron Building was anything but routine. Infighting among the prior owners, which included GFP Real Estate, had led to the building being sold at auction in March 2023, when a virtually unknown buyer named Jacob Garlick won with a bid of $190 million.

However, after making his winning bid, Garlick proceeded to "vanish into the ether," as one press report put it, and never put down his 10% deposit of $19 million. This sparked another auction that May, which a GFP-led group won with a bid of $161 million. The developer launched its partnership with Brodsky and Sorgente a few months later.

Other noteworthy office-to-residential conversions now under way in the city include the former Pfizer headquarters in Midtown, which Metro Loft Developers is converting into a 1,500-unit apartment complex, and 750 Third Ave., which SL Green is converting into a more than 600-unit residential building.