Another Manhattan office building has come onto the market. It is the landmarked Argonaut Building, an office and retail property spanning approximately 140,000 square feet at 224 West 57th Street in Midtown. George Soros’s Soros Fund Management is offering the property for sale and, according to a source familiar with the transaction, is seeking a price of around US$100 million.
Built in 1909 between Broadway and Seventh Avenue, the building appears to be fully occupied by Soros’s philanthropic organisation Open Society Foundations, which moved into the building in 2013 and holds a lease until 2042. TD Bank is the retail tenant on the ground floor.
In April 2024, Soros, as a tenant, filed a foreclosure lawsuit against the former owner eretz group, as the latter had defaulted on a US$145 million mortgage loan, as The Real Deal reported at the time. Eretz had acquired the property in 2015 for US$213.8 million. It remains unclear why Soros now wishes to divest the property after acquiring it in a foreclosure auction. However, according to TRD, which first reported the listing news, the billionaire plans to relocate his philanthropic group from the building once a deal is finalised.
Potential for residential conversion
Newmark’s Adam Spies, Adam Doneger and Willis Robbins are marketing the building. An offering memorandum from the brokerage described the sale as a “rare opportunity” to convert the historic building into “prime residential units,” according to TRD. The property has additional development rights that could allow for a total buildable area of over 200,000 square feet, the publication stated.
Trend towards office conversion
Should an office-to-residential conversion take place at the building on West 57th Street, it would complement another nearby conversion project, specifically at 135 East 57th Street. There, TF Cornerstone is converting the former office building into 350 apartments. Newmark declined to comment, while a spokesperson for the Open Society Foundations did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
