Tishman Speyer reveals plans for $500M Brooklyn, NY office project

Dive Brief:

Tishman Speyer unveiled its design and construction schedule Wednesday for The Wheeler, a $500 million, 10-floor office tower that will be built on top of a Brooklyn, NY, Macy's department store, according to a company press release.
Macy's will still operate on the first four floors of the building, but The Wheeler will incorporate existing upper floors into the new 620,000-square-foot space, which will feature 16-foot-high ceilings, an amenity floor and 30,000 square feet to 90,000 square feet of rentable space on each of the remaining floors.
The Class A office building, which is scheduled for completion in 2019, is speculative, but developers hope to capitalize on the growing popularity of downtown Brooklyn to attract tenants, according to The New York Times.

Dive Insight:

The Wheeler is only one project in a wave of office construction currently underway in Brooklyn. New office development in the area follows a more than decade-long period of residential construction, which has created 9,400 additional apartments, with more than 11,000 either being built or in the pipeline. This boom in residential construction has aided companies in attracting the pool of talent that they aim to draw.

Earlier this year, Tishman Speyer announced that it had secured a $194 million construction loan for The Wheeler project from the Bank of the Ozarks. The developer purchased the property from Macy's for $270 million in 2015, and the department store is reportedly utilizing those funds to pay for a $100 million renovation of the building's lower floors.

At the same time the company went public with news of the loan, The Real Deal reported that Tishman Speyer was also looking to capitalize on the EB-5 visa program in the amount of $60 million. The EB-5 visa offers foreign investors the chance to put their cash into qualified U.S. projects. In return, investors are moved to the head of the line for green card application processing.

Manhattan's Hudson Yards project, in which Tishman Speyer has skyscrapers in development, reportedly has raised $600 million using the EB-5 program.