NEW YORK (AP) — JPMorgan Chase unveiled its new 60-story headquarters to the public on Monday, one of the first major office buildings to be constructed after the COVID-19 pandemic and one that will remake the New York City skyline for decades.
The bronze and steel tower at 270 Park, which reportedly cost $3 billion, replaced the Union Carbide Building, which sat on a full city block between 47th and 48th Street and Park Avenue and Madison Avenue for nearly 60 years. JPMorgan expects to house roughly 10,000 of its 24,000 New York-based employees in the new building, with some employees starting their first workday at the tower at the same time as the company holds its ribbon cutting ceremony.
“For 225 years, JPMorgan Chase has always been deeply rooted in New York City. The opening of our new global headquarters is not only a significant investment in New York, but also testament to our commitment to our clients and employees worldwide,” said Jamie Dimon, CEO and chairman of JPMorgan, in a statement.
The completion of the new 270 Park is a major accomplishment for Dimon, who has been one of loudest voices calling for employees to report to an office for work. The building was designed before the COVID-19 pandemic made remote work more common. The bank held meetings to consider halting work on the building to either redesign it or scale it back, but Dimon was insistent that work should continue as designed.
Both politicians and CEOs, particularly Wall Street CEOs, have been vocal about the need for companies to have offices. New York politicians must answer to local businesses that have existed for decades and are used by workers to eat, groom, shop and drink at.
“To have this investment at this extraordinary time is a testament to that New York audacity and ambition,” said Gov. Kathy Hochul, who attended as part of the ribbon cutting ceremony. The ceremony ended with the playing of “Empire State of Mind” by Jay-Z and Alicia Keyes.
At 1,388 feet, the new building designed by famed architect Norman Foster, is taller than the Empire State Building’s roofline and is now the fourth-largest building in Manhattan. The building contains 2.5 million square feet and a block’s worth of public space. The bank also commissioned five new artworks for the building, adding to the bank’s already substantial art collection. The bank will house its trading operations in the building across eight floors, and has contracted out several food and coffee vendors to create a city-within-a-building concept.
The building was a major engineering and architectural undertaking by Foster, the building’s lead architect and Tishman Speyer, who handled construction and engineering. The old Union Carbide building had to be systematically demolished over a period of two years, most of that demolition happening during the pandemic. Construction was complicated by the fact the site sits above the rails of the Metro North Railroad and the Long Island Railroad that run underneath Park Avenue into Grand Central Terminal.
For years, JPMorgan has worked out of several buildings around Grand Central Terminal, a result of the bank’s growth and acquisitions over the years.
Corporate execs and investment bankers still use 383 Madison Ave, the former headquarters of Bear Stearns, and 277 Park, which housed Chemical Bank, also a predecessor of the current JPMorgan Chase. Parts of JPMorgan started using the Union Carbide Building in the mid-1990s, but the bank always struggled to fit all its operations in the building. The building was designed to house 3,000 employees when it was built in the 1960s, and JPMorgan housed more than 6,000 there within a few short years of moving in.
With 270 Park finished, the bank says it will now start a renovation of 383 Madison. Dimon said the bank has purchased a few other adjacent properties near 270 Park to centralize its operations around its new headquarters for the long term.
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