With Verizon controlling three floors of its namesake switching center,
Taconic prepares to transform the windowless 375 Pearl St. into glass-clad
office space
By Paul Bubny
Editor
Conveniently located near the Fulton Street Transit Center,
this new Downtown office tower will boast a highly visible, contemporary exterior and LEED Gold certification.
However, it’s not one of the structures now under construction at
Ground Zero. In fact, the building has been a fixture of the Lower
Manhattan cityscape for 34 years.
The tower in question is 375 Pearl St., built in the 1970s for
New York Telephone and more recently known as the Verizon
Building. A joint venture of Taconic Investment Partners and
Square Mile Capital bought a condominium interest in 29 floors
of the 32-story property from Verizon for $172 million in the fall
of 2007. Taconic has essentially completed pre-development work
in preparation for transforming the building into 1. 15 million
square feet of class A office space.
When it’s finished, the reconfigured 375 Pearl will bear little
resemblance to the nearly windowless, limestone-clad telephone
switching center whose architecture has earned its share of critical
As part of its reconfiguration of 375 Pearl St., Taconic Investment Partners
plans to move the entrance from the building’s north side to the south, adding
a landscaped plaza in the process.
brickbats over the years. Writing in the New York Times last September, Nicolai Ouroussoff placed the circa-1975 Verizon Building among the New York City structures he’d most like to see torn
down, likening it to “Moscow’s Stalin-era apartment towers.”
Taconic’s planned redesign aims to make the building stand out
in a more positive way. The exterior will be reclad with a glass curtain wall that will give office tenants panoramic views of the skyline
and harbor, thanks in part to floor heights that range from 14 to 23
feet. In keeping with the project’s commitment to achieve LEED
certification, some of the limestone cladding will be re-used.
The $350-million upgrade also calls for a new lobby, new building systems and a reconfigured core that will enable the installation of up to six additional elevators. In place of the low-key main
entrance on the building’s north side, there will be a higher-profile
one on the south, facing out into an increasingly active neighborhood rather than looking away from it.
“The neighborhood feels different; it feels better,” says Taconic’s
vice president of development, Doug Winshall, about 375 Pearl’s
surroundings. “And some of the major improvements coming to
this area will make it even more so.” He cites the planned redevelopment of the South Street Seaport, the influx of new residential
and retail, the renaissance of historic Front Street and the East
River Waterfront Esplanade and Piers project. Police Plaza, 375
Pearl’s next-door neighbor, is also undergoing a renovation.
Additionally, Winshall points out that having a major office tenant at 375 Pearl will itself help reshape the area. “They’re going to
bring thousands of people to the neighborhood,” he says. “That
will further cement all of the other changes.”
Verizon’s logo still tops the 540-foot structure, but advances in technology have greatly reduced the amount of space needed to accommodate its operations there. The telecommunications giant owns
and controls three floors; that leaves contiguous blocks of 924,000
square feet above and 210,000 square feet below Verizon’s space.
