E
ven the richest in fashion feel New York’s office slump. Zara founder Amancio Ortega is selling his 17‑story Midtown tower at 366 Madison Ave for roughly $50 million—a steep drop from the $115.5 million Pontegadea paid in 2006, Bloomberg reports. The nearly 60 % loss reflects the broader collapse of Manhattan office values since the pandemic emptied many floors. The building, just a block from Grand Central, is headed to the Sioni Group, with Eastdil Secured handling the transaction. Neither party has issued a statement.

    The sale does not signal a retreat from real estate for Ortega, whose net worth exceeds $104 billion. He has continued to acquire overseas assets, snapping up Paris’s Hotel Banke for about $113 million and adding a prime property on Barcelona’s Diagonal Avenue. The Madison sale is part of a larger trend in New York, where aging office towers are being converted into residential units. Projects such as 25 Water St., billed as the largest office‑to‑residential conversion in the U.S., are adding thousands of apartments. Similar conversions at 55 Broad, 5 Times Square, and dozens of other sites are projected to deliver over 17,000 new homes in the coming years, aiming to meet soaring housing demand while reducing the city’s surplus of vacant office space.

    These conversions are part of a citywide effort to repurpose idle office space, with developers citing rising demand for urban housing and the need to diversify property portfolios. The shift also reflects a broader reevaluation of commercial real‑estate as work patterns evolve.