Soros Fund Management is asking about $100 million for the landmarked Argonaut Building at 224 West 57th Street, a Midtown office tower it just took control of through foreclosure. The 140,000-square-foot property sits on Billionaires' Row, and the firm is marketing it with an eye toward converting the century-old structure into high-end apartments.
The sale is being handled by Newmark, according to The Real Deal, with brokers Adam Spies and Adam Doneger marketing the property on the firm's behalf. Newmark's offering memo describes the building as a chance to reposition a New York City-landmarked asset into residences, and the asking price works out to roughly $480 per buildable square foot. Soros Fund Management, through affiliate QPTF LLC, had acquired the $145 million mortgage on the building in November 2023 and filed a pre-foreclosure lawsuit in April 2024 against landlord Eretz Group after the property fell into default when Eretz failed to pay off the loan's principal by its June 2023 maturity date, according to PincusCo.
Soros Fund Management ultimately acquired the Argonaut Building through a foreclosure auction this month, and the report notes the firm expects to sell the property after receiving the deed in the coming weeks. The building's existing office tenancy is set to expire shortly after that closing.
From Tenant to Owner to Seller
The Argonaut Building's office space had been fully occupied for years as the global headquarters of George Soros's Open Society Foundations, which signed a 160,000-square-foot lease there in April 2011, according to The Real Deal's earlier reporting. That dual role — as both anchor tenant and, later, senior lender — put Soros Fund Management in position to clear the title once landlord Eretz Group defaulted.
Eretz Group had originally bought the commercial condominium units at 224 West 57th Street for $213.8 million in May 2015 from Beirut-based M1 Real Estate, before refinancing with the $145 million loan in 2018, per New York YIMBY. The roughly $100 million ask now on the table represents a steep drop from that 2015 purchase price, underscoring how far commercial valuations along the corridor have fallen.
A Landmark With Room to Grow
Designed by architect Francis H. Kimball, the building opened in 1909 as two separate automobile showroom facilities on what was then Midtown's Automobile Row, and it was officially designated a New York City landmark in December 2000, according to the NYC Landmarks Preservation Commission's records. The building sits at the corner of Broadway and West 57th Street.
The property contains approximately 127,647 built square feet along with 43,590 square feet of unused air rights, per PincusCo's earlier reporting. Those additional air rights could give a future developer room to add residential units beyond the existing footprint.
Policy Shifts Fuel a Wave of Conversions
The Argonaut listing arrives amid a broader wave of office-to-residential conversions unlocked by recent policy changes. The New York City Council adopted the City of Yes for Housing Opportunity zoning amendment in December 2024, expanding conversion eligibility to non-residential structures built before December 31, 1990, according to the NYC Department of City Planning. New York State separately enacted Real Property Tax Law Section 467-m in April 2024, offering up to 35 years of property tax exemptions for conversions that set aside at least 25% of units as affordable housing, per the NYC Housing Preservation and Development agency.
Four blocks east of the Argonaut, developer TF Cornerstone acquired the ground lease at 135 East 57th Street in August 2025 and plans to convert that office building into 350 apartments. The comparison offers a direct local precedent for how distressed office debt along 57th Street is being repurposed into housing.
Manhattan office conversion starts have grown sharply as vacancy rates exceeded 22%, climbing from 1.6 million square feet in 2023 to 3.3 million in 2024 and 5.0 million square feet in 2025, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center. Greystone also discusses office-to-residential trends in Manhattan.
A buyer moving forward with residential plans for the Argonaut Building could make use of the unused air rights to add apartments in one of Manhattan's most expensive corridors.
