The iconic Bryant Park Hotel is checking out of its long-time home on West 40th Street, The Post has learned.
The entire landmarked building, including popular ground-floor restaurant Koi and underground lounge Celon, is being offered as “boutique” office space by Philips International, the agent for owners Philip Pilevsky, Raymond Gindi and Joseph Chehebar.
All 122,000 square feet on 25 floors are available in sizes from 1,900 to 7,535 square feet, according to marketing materials.
There was no mention of asking rents. But area brokers said they’ve been told the owners hope for $85-$125 per square foot.
“They want to see what they can get,” a source not involved at the location said. “As bad as the hotel market’s going to be after the pandemic, there’s surprising optimism about offices.
“There’s been a bump-up in Midtown office leasing even though most buildings are near-empty,” the insider noted. “There were big new leases for TikTok, AIG and Raymond James at towers in the West 40s and 50s. Of course, the Bryant Park’s smaller floors make it a different kind of animal.”
Covid-19 has challenged hotel owners to devise new strategies for properties. So many new rooms were built in recent years that even before the pandemic, not even a tourism-and-visitor boom could fill them all.
The Omni Berkshire on Madison Avenue also will likely be converted to offices while other inns are being used as temporary homeless shelters.
The handsome, black-brick structure at 40 W. 40th St. between Fifth and Sixth avenues has been a Manhattan postcard icon since it opened in 1924 as the American Radiator Building. Painter Georgia O’Keeffe immortalized it in her 1927 masterpiece, “Radiator Building at Night.”
It went through several ownership changes and re-namings until Pilevsky’s group bought it for $150 million in 1998. Reborn as a hip hotel, it became an anchor for the blocks south of 42nd Street when the redesigned park brought new energy to the once crime-ridden district.
Philips International’s Michael Robbins didn’t get back to us.
scuozzo@nypost.com