M&T targets early Q3 for moving CNY regional HQ to 250 S. Clinton St.

SYRACUSE — M&T Bank expects to move its Central New York regional headquarters office and main local branch to 250 S. Clinton St. at the end of the second quarter or early third quarter.

The leased space will replace the bank’s current historic home overlooking Clinton Square, which it has agreed to sell.

M&T Bank will occupy the entire 35,000-square-foot fourth floor of the six-story, 180,000-square-foot 250 S. Clinton St. building for office space. 

“The large floor plate will allow us to position entire departments in the same area and upgrade the work environment for our employees, which we think will ultimately also benefit our customers,” Allen Naples, M&T Bank’s Central New York regional president tells CNYBJ in an email. 

In a previous interview in November, as M&T Bank was still looking for its new office, Naples told CNYBJ that being able to have all of the bank’s staff on one floor, with an open-floor design with “a lot of ambient light” was important. The bank chose this building from among three sites in the city of Syracuse that made its final list, after looking at a total of 12 locations, per Naples.

The previous tenant of the fourth-floor space was an AT&T call center.

M&T Bank will also use 2,800 square feet on the building’s first floor for branch space. The new branch will feature an array of consumer and commercial products and services, as well as an onsite expert in small business and SBA lending, the bank says. It will also have a 24-hour ATM vestibule available to customers after branch hours.

All of M&T Bank’s 140 employees at its CNY regional HQ at 101 S. Salina St. will be moving to the new office at 250 S. Clinton St.

M&T says it will invest about $7 million to renovate both the fourth floor and first-floor spaces, as well as upgrade them with the latest in technology, furniture, and equipment. The bank has yet to bid the renovation work out to construction contractors.

Current building sale

M&T Bank on Jan. 21 announced that it has agreed to sell its current, regional headquarters office at 101 S. Salina St. to Douglas Development Corp., a Washington, D.C.– based real-estate developer. The bank didn’t disclose the price or other financial terms. 

The 10-story office building — which was one of Syracuse’s first steel-frame structures, built in 1897 — has about 120,000 square feet of space in total. It also has an attached parking garage that has more than 500 parking spaces.

Douglas Jemal, principal of Douglas Development, said he plans to create a mix of apartments and ground floor retail spaces, with the details to be worked out once he takes ownership. The sale is expected to be completed in the second quarter of this year, M&T Bank said.

“This gorgeous building near Clinton Square sits at the heart of the city’s center, and we intend to return it to glory, and to help contribute to the rejuvenation that’s happening in downtown Syracuse,” Jemal said in an M&T news release.

Douglas Development is currently redeveloping several buildings in downtown Buffalo, including the city’s tallest building, known as Seneca One, into commercial space and residential units.

“Douglas has decades of experience thoughtfully preserving and remaking large, historic buildings like ours with truly revolutionary results,” Naples added. M&T Bank worked with Cushman & Wakefield/Pyramid Brokerage Co. on the building sale.

Buffalo–based M&T Bank Corp. (NYSE: MTB) has 45 offices and employs nearly 500 people in its Central New York region, which includes Onondaga, Cayuga, Oswego, Madison, Herkimer, Jefferson, Lewis, Oneida, and Seneca Counties. It holds the largest share of deposits in the Syracuse metro area and the broader 16-county Central New York region that CNYBJ covers.