midtown misses you

new york’s business district is half-empty. every other big city has a similar problem. developer aby rosen is still planning a bright post-pandemic future.

- Devin Leonard

The 61st-floor terrace of the Chrysler Building, the Jazz Age wonder of the New York skyline, is studded with massive steel eagles. On a misty October night, Aby Rosen, the German-born investor who’s redeveloping the building, leans against a railing beside one of the birds. It’s beginning to drizzle, but Rosen, who has long white hair and alert blue eyes, is in an ebullient mood.

He points out the other landmarks near his own landmarked building, which his company, RFR Holding LLC, purchased last year with Signa Group, an Austrian real estate investor, for $151 million. There’s the statue of Mercury in his winged helmet welcoming travelers to Grand Central Terminal, the Beaux Arts gateway to the city for commuters from the northern suburbs. Rosen gestures to the jagged summit of One Vanderbilt, the neighborhood’s latest skyscraper, to be joined in a few years by JPMorgan Chase & Co.’s princely new headquarters, under construction nearby on Park Avenue.

To the west, Rosen can see the shimmering towers of Hudson Yards, New York’s newest commercial district. Many tenants, including some of his, have been drawn there, but they can have it as far as he’s concerned. “It’s quite stunning,” Rosen says. “It’s like a city unto itself. But Midtown, for me, has always been the most exciting part.”

He says there will be no better Midtown address than the Chrysler Building, once he and his partners complete a renovation that will cost at least $200 million. He steps through the window back into the 61st floor. It’s been entirely gutted. Rosen is transforming the space into a cocktail bar and restaurant, taking its name from the Cloud Club, the celestial hangout that once operated in the building’s spire, attracting the likes of John D. Rockefeller and Jack Dempsey.