New York Archdiocese sells office headquarters for reported $100 million

The Archdiocese of New York has sold its longtime office headquarters, in a move first announced by Cardinal Timothy M. Dolan in January.

Bloomberg reported the sale Oct. 10, stating that the Terence Cardinal Cooke Building site at 1011 First Ave. in Manhattan had been acquired by Vanbarton Group, a boutique real estate investment firm, for more than $100 million.

A woman walks by the New York Catholic Center, which houses the offices of the Archdiocese of New York, Sept. 13, 2019. T(OSV News photo/Chaz Muth)

The site — which currently houses archdiocesan offices, as well as Catholic Charities of New York, the Catholic Near East Welfare Association and St. John the Evangelist Church — will be redeveloped as residential rental units.

The archdiocese confirmed the sale to OSV News in an Oct. 11 email, with director of communications Joseph Zwilling stating that many of the archdiocese’s offices “will be moving to smaller space at 488 Madison Avenue” — located next to St. Patrick’s Cathedral — “in late spring/early summer of 2025.

“Those offices are currently being renovated and prepared,” wrote Zwilling, who did not provide confirmation of the sale price. “Other offices will be housed at other church property throughout the archdiocese; those details are still being finalized.”

He told OSV News that St. John the Evangelist Parish, the church and offices of which had been housed in the building, “has been canonically merged” with the Church of the Holy Family, located within a block of the United Nations headquarters.

Zwilling said the “proceeds of this sale will be used to ease the financial burden caused by the sexual abuse crisis.”

Currently, the archdiocese is battling the Chubb insurance group over abuse claim payouts, with Cardinal Dolan announcing in an Oct. 1 message to the faithful that the archdiocese had filed suit against its insurer for refusal of coverage. The cardinal said the archdiocese had settled more than 400 credible cases of abuse not covered by insurance through its Independent Reconciliation and Compensation Program, and had closed out another 123 cases following New York’s 2019 Child Victims Act.

However, “about 1,400 cases of alleged abuse, some dating back to World War II” remained, said the cardinal in that message, with “the two largest groups of complaints … against a former volunteer basketball coach and a former janitor.”

In his January announcement to the faithful, Cardinal Dolan said the sale of the archdiocesan headquarters on First Avenue was a prudent and long-considered move.

“It has been apparent for several years … that ‘1011’ no longer made sense as our home,” he wrote, pointing to maintenance costs, technological needs and “a desire to be closer to the people we serve throughout the archdiocese.”

In that letter to faithful, Cardinal Dolan said the Madison Avenue site was a kind of homecoming.

“It was at one time the location of a Catholic Charities orphanage, as well as the former home of Cathedral College Seminary. Its location adjacent to St. Patrick’s Cathedral is another ‘plus’ in its favor,” he wrote.