Bill Ackman Just Spent $260 Million on the Upper West Side; Here’s What He’s Building - iLovetheUpperWestSide.com

What the report says

I Love the Upper West Side reports that billionaire investor Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square Foundation has bought 125 West End Avenue, the former ABC campus between West 65th and 66th streets, for $190 million, citing Fortune. The foundation also has a contract to purchase the adjacent 320 West 66th Street for $70 million, bringing the reported acquisition total to $260 million before any additional development rights are considered.

The site is planned as the Ackman Oxman Institute, a brain research center named for Ackman and his wife, designer and researcher Neri Oxman. According to the report, the project is being developed with Mount Sinai and is expected to focus on areas including genetics, nutrition, longevity, rehabilitation and neurosurgery. The article says added development rights could allow the overall complex to reach nearly 700,000 square feet, substantially larger than the existing roughly 400,000-square-foot building.

The building has had several past uses, including as a Chrysler facility, part of a New York Times printing operation and ABC’s New York campus from 1985 until early 2021. It had more recently been marketed by Taconic Partners and Nuveen Real Estate as West End Labs, a life sciences conversion project.

I Love the Upper West Side notes that a project of this scale would likely draw local scrutiny and require new Department of Buildings filings if the full expansion proceeds. The article also reports that the institute’s board includes Nobel laureate Jim Rothman and Stanford neuroscientist Andrew Huberman, that a CEO search is underway, and that Ackman expects operations in the main building to begin by the end of this year.