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The development of a skyscraper in New York City that will house Ken Griffin’s Citadel is moving forward despite his feud with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
The skyscraper project at 350 Park Avenue is being developed by Griffin’s Citadel in partnership with Vornado Realty Trust and Rudin, and will see two of Griffin’s firms being anchor tenants.
Steven Roth, CEO of Vornado Realty Trust, said on the company’s earnings call on Tuesday that the project is underway and that the REIT will maximize its stake in the venture.
“If you drive or walk past Park Avenue at 52nd Street, you will see that our 350 Park Avenue site is now under construction, actually under demolition. We intend to shortly exercise our investment option to participate in this deal at our maximum ownership alongside Ken Griffin as our 60% partner and with Citadel as our 1-million-square-foot anchor tenant.”
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Roth said on the call that Citadel holds a 60% stake in the partnership, while Vornado’s will top out at 36%.
The project is moving forward after Mamdani specifically criticized Griffin for owning a penthouse on Central Park South in a video detailing his new pied-a-terre tax, which is levied on high-value residential properties whose owners don’t live in the city full-time.
Mamdani spurred the controversy with an April 15 video the mayor recorded in front of Griffin’s penthouse, calling him out as a wealthy hedge fund owner who would be subject to the new luxury property tax.
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“When I ran for mayor, I said I was going to tax the rich. Well, today we’re taxing the rich… This is an annual fee on luxury properties worth more than $5 million whose owners do not live full-time in the city – like this penthouse, which hedge fund CEO Ken Griffin bought for $238 million,” Mamdani said in his video.
Griffin responded, calling the personal attack “creepy and weird,” worrying that it put him in harm’s way and demonstrated a “profound lack of judgment,” on Mamdani’s part.
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Citadel executives went on to suggest that the new office space could become a casualty of Mamdani’s not-so-business-friendly policies.
Gerald Beeson, the firm’s COO, wrote in an April 23 memo to employees that the firm’s development of 350 Park Avenue was about to begin and would create “6,000 highly paid construction jobs” as well as support the “creation of more than 15,000 permanent jobs in Midtown New York.”
“The project – if we move forward – will entail more than $6 billion dollars of spending,” Beeson wrote.
Mamdani eventually softened his rhetoric and thanked Griffin for his contributions to the city, including funding a memorial wall for police officers killed in the September 11 attacks and those who died of illnesses related to the recovery from the attacks that will open later this year in NYC Police Headquarters.
FOX Business’ Robert McGreevey contributed to this report.
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