Bushburg buying Rudin’s half-empty FiDi office building for $160M

Brooklyn developer Bushburg is crossing the East River to get in on the office-to-resi boom.

Joseph Hoffman’s company is in contract to buy the Rudin family’s 1.2 million-square-foot office building at 80 Pine Street for around $160 million, The Real Deal has learned. The building, which is about half empty, could be the latest Manhattan office tower converted into apartments.

Rudin Management declined to comment. Bushburg did not respond to a request for comment. 

The 40-story tower has been dealing with a large vacancy since the insurance giant AIG left 800,000 square feet in 2021 and relocated to Midtown. Rudin put the 1960s-era building up for sale in the fall with an Eastdil Secured team led by Will Silverman and Gary Phillips, who arranged the deal with Bushburg. Eastdil declined to comment.

It appears this will be the first investment in Manhattan for Hoffman’s company, which made a name for itself developing in Brooklyn’s trendy northern neighborhoods and has since ventured to father-flung areas of the borough, as well as to such markets as Jersey City and Miami.

With office tenants shying away from dated properties, and residential rents near record highs in the city, more and more of Manhattan’s aging office buildings are being teed up for conversions.

In the Financial District, Jeff Gural’s GFP Real Estate, Nathan Berman’s Metro Loft, and Rockwood Capital are working on converting the 1.1 million-square-foot office building at 25 Water Street into 1,300 apartments.

Berman also recently inked a deal to team up with David Werner to convert Pfizer’s former Midtown headquarters into 1,500 apartments, and is in talks to join InterVest Capital on a conversion at 111 Wall Street.

Werner is also in contract to buy 100 Wall Street, which could be another office-to-residential candidate.

New York state lawmakers last week passed a budget bill that included incentives to spur conversions of outdated office buildings. The Adams administration plans to make more properties eligible for conversion to residential and to speed the process.

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