Syracuse, N.Y. -- M&T Bank’s historic downtown Syracuse building, where tenants once looked out the windows to see boats go by on the Erie Canal, is up for sale.
M&T Central New York Regional President Allen Naples said the bank is accepting bids for the 122-year-old building overlooking Clinton Square and expects to reach an agreement with a buyer before the end of the year.
Naples called the building “a fabulous location” but said the bank no longer needs such a large space. While it employs 130 people in the building -- not significantly less than the number it employed when he became regional president 15 years ago -- technology has reduced the amount of space it needs, he said.
In addition, the branch lobby, at about 30,000 square feet, is far larger than the 2,500 to 3,000 square feet that M&T’s modern branches typically contain, he said.
“It just doesn’t fit who we are today,” he said.
Naples said the bank is seeking a new location within the city to house its regional office and main local bank branch. It wants to consolidate its offices onto a single floor with approximately 30,000 to 35,000 square feet of space, he said.
He said the bank may lease back its current office space and branch in the building from the buyer until a new location is found.
Built by the Onondaga County Savings Bank in 1897, the 10-story neoclassical building is one of Syracuse’s first steel-frame skyscrapers. At the time, nearby Clinton Square was the city’s center of commerce and remained so long after the Erie Canal, which ran through its center, was filled in during the 1920s.
Buffalo-based M&T Bank became the building’s owner when it acquired OnBank in 1998.
The building’s huge branch lobby features an ornate ceiling and columns, and walls lined with murals depicting Syracuse’s early history. Located on the southeast corner of South Salina and East Genesee streets, the structure is a contributing building in the Hanover Square Historic District, which is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
The building contains 120,000 square feet of office and retail space. The bank is also selling an attached 85,000-square-foot garage with 510 parking spaces, an asset that likely will enhance the bank building’s value to buyers.
Naples said the bank occupies about 55 percent of the building, including the branch lobby, the entire third, fourth, eighth and ninth floors and a portion of the seventh floor. The 10th floor is leased to other tenants, but much of the rest of the office space in the building -- consisting of about 30 percent to 40 percent of the building’s office space -- is vacant, he said.
The Mackenzie Hughes law firm, which leased the entire fifth and sixth floors and had been a tenant in the building since 1913, moved to the Galleries of Syracuse a few blocks away in 2016. Naples said M&T has not been able to find a tenant for the space.
The bank considered making extensive renovations to create more modern, “open” office space with far fewer individual executive offices. However, the historic nature of the branch would have made that portion of the building impossible to modernize, and the bank still would face the problem of finding tenants for the unused portions of the building, Naples said.
“This was not easy to do,” he said of the decision to move. “But you get down to the point where you just can’t find enough people to lease (the space).”
Naples said the bank has received a lot of interest from developers across New York, as well as from the West Coast and the South. Some of the concepts being proposed for the building include apartments or condos on the upper floors with retail space on the ground floor, he said.
Downtown Syracuse has been undergoing a renaissance in recent years as developers have converted underutilized office space in many older buildings, some of them historic, into upscale apartments. Demand for office space remains weak, though.
Naples said he is not sure what a buyer would do with the building’s historic branch lobby, but he said that will be part of the company’s thinking when it chooses a buyer. Possibilities include a high-end event space or a restaurant, he said.
“You can’t cut it up,” he said.
Cushman & Wakefield/Pyramid Brokerage Co. is representing the bank in the sale.
Rick Moriarty covers business news and consumer issues. Have a question or news tip? Contact him anytime: Email | Twitter | Facebook | 315-470-3148
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