The Wing’s Former HQ Finds a Buyer

The Wing’s former headquarters has new ownership in the roost.

An anonymous buyer purchased the building at 137 Second Avenue in the East Village for $19 million, the New York Post reported. The Cofinance Group put the property on the market for $22.5 million in March, four years after it purchased it from Joel Schreiber and his co-owners for $18 million.

Before Cofinance purchased the property, the women-centric co-working company leased the entire property, where the asking rent was in the high-$60s per square foot. The three-story building spans 15,000 square feet, meaning the latest sale broke down to roughly $1,267 per square foot.

A Cushman & Wakefield team including Hunter Moss and Michael DeCheser represented Cofinance, while a Denham Wolf team including Paul Wolf and Christopher Turner represented the anonymous buyer.

As mysterious as the buyer is the future of the property, which was built in 1884 and designated a city landmark nearly a century later. In the past, the building had been the Stuyvesant Polyclinic and the Cabrini Medical Center.

Features of the property include a finished basement, private outdoor space and 50 feet of frontage on the avenue. Flexible zoning keeps options for the asset’s future available, including a residential conversion.

The Wing was a co-working company that flew too close to the sun. Founded in 2016, popularity came quickly for the firm, boosted by more than $100 million solicited from investors such as Sequoia Capital, WeWork and Airbnb. Known for Instagramable interiors, the company spread to 11 locations across two countries.

Controversy and the pandemic took hold, however, nearly sending The Wing into bankruptcy in 2020. Co-founder Audrey Gelman exited that year amid allegations of mistreating people of color, as well as a gender discrimination lawsuit. A year ago, the Wing was officially clipped, closing its last offices in Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco and Chicago.

— Holden Walter-Warner