The building at 368 Ninth Ave. in midtown Manhattan was never meant to be an office tower. Constructed in 1930, it was a warehouse for Sears, with some offices and a call center space thrown in, and at one point housed an oyster bar. While it had been repurposed for offices over the past nine decades, the structure didn’t scream 21st-century workplace, much less trendy co-working space.
The building—now owned by Nuveen Real Estate, the new name of the former TH Real Estate—needed to be redesigned and redeveloped in response to broader changes in the neighborhood, which includes Hudson Yards across the street. Otherwise it would have been difficult to compete with the shiny, more modern properties and lure tenants like WeWork, which will have a 236,000-sq-ft co-working location in the building.