Real Estate

MetLife to move all city offices to its namesake tower

MetLife is heading to the jumbo skyscraper it once owned.

The insurance giant has signed a lease to quadruple its space at 200 Park Ave. — and will move all its Big Apple employees to the Midtown tower where its name is affixed along the roof line in 15-foot letters.

The new lease covers about 550,000 square feet.

In a statement, the $57 billion company said this will become its “sole New York City employee location” and added the 12-year lease will “increase its footprint in the building by approximately 430,000 square feet.”

MetLife already leases about 110,400 square feet in the building, according to CoStar Group data — space that includes the 56th and 57th floors in the 59-story tower that straddles Park Ave. and overlooks Grand Central Terminal.

It will now add 335,000 square feet on the 3rd through 5th floors now occupied by Barclay’s, sources said.

To make it available for MetLife, Barclay’s signed a surrender agreement to give the space back to the building’s owners, Tishman Speyer Properties, in a deal negotiated by Michael Berg, Kenneth Siegel and Peter Riguardi of JLL, which declined comment.

The Post first reported the consolidation to 200 Park on Dec. 23, 2014, when the insurance giant was also negotiating for, and will now have the 93,500 square foot 6th floor, as well.

MetLife was represented by a Cushman & Wakefield team of Bruce Mosler and John Cefaly, sources said. That company also declined comment.

MetLife will be moving out of 1095 Ave. of the Americas, 277 Park Ave. and Long Island City to what they state is “this one central location, in phases, beginning in December 2016. All moves are expected to be completed by the first half of 2017.”

MetLife pioneered a move to LIC but the area was not as built up and in demand as it is now. The company subleased that space to others and has already moved many employees back to Manhattan.

For years, MetLife occupied One Madison Ave. in Midtown South but since it purchased 200 Park Ave. from Pan Am in 1980, it has used it as its corporate address and maintained a presence in the 3.14 million-square-foot tower.

Its lease at 1095 Sixth Ave. for 355,000 square feet has options to 2029, but was signed at the trough of the market could now be subleased, sources said. It could also be bought out of the remaining years by the building’s new ownership, as its space there is far more valuable than what it pays, and the MetLife lease will be even cheaper.

Tishman Speyer Properties declined comment, but likely negotiated on behalf of the ownership group that includes Donald Bren’s Irvine Co.