The Midtown office tower that turned heads with its rock-bottom sale on the online auction site Ten-X is poised for a second act.
McKinney, Texas-based Thakkar Developers, owners of the 925,000-square-foot building at 135 West 50th Street, is planning to convert much of the property into apartments, co-founder Sam Thakkar told The Real Deal.
“We’re working to finish up the diagrams and those things required to convert that building to residential,” Thakkar said, adding that early architectural studies show the existing footprint can accommodate between 550 and 700 apartments.
The project would mark a dramatic pivot for the 23-story building, which traded at a steep discount in 2024 after a two-day auction on the online platform Ten-X. The Thakkar family acquired the leasehold for $8.5 million — roughly 97 percent less than the $332.5 million that UBS paid for the property in 2006.
The deep discount reflected the complexities of the deal. The property is encumbered by a ground lease, with Safehold owning the land beneath the building and commanding a substantial ground rent.
Now, the Thakkar family is betting on residential demand to reposition the 1963 building, which is 35 percent occupied, according to CoStar data. While the upper floors are slated for conversion, Thakkar said the building will likely retain a mix of uses, with some lower floors continuing as office space and the existing retail tenants remaining in place. The residential conversion wouldn’t require any rezoning, according to the Department of City Planning.
Ground-floor occupants include Singapore street food center Urban Hawker and Bobby Van’s Grill. Accounting firm Forvis Mazars is the largest office tenant, occupying about 89,000 square feet on floors 16 through 19 under a lease that expires in 2036, according to CoStar.
Thakkar said the firm is considering whether to tap into state tax incentives, which would involve designating a portion of the units as affordable. It is hoping to start initial demolition work as early as July, though the broader buildout is more likely to kick off in early 2027.
The conversion would be the family’s first office-to-residential conversion and its first real estate project outside Texas.
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