By Gus Saltonstall
Bill Ackman, the billionaire hedge fund manager and longtime Upper West Sider, recently had his Pershing Square Foundation purchase two buildings in the neighborhood for $260 million.
The plan? To build a brain research institute on the Upper West Side.
Pershing Square Foundation — the philanthropic arm of Ackman’s hedge fund — bought 125 West End Avenue, between West 65th and 66th streets, this week for $190 million, as first reported by Fortune. The foundation has also signed a contract to purchase the next-door address at 320 West 66th Street for $70 million.
Together, the research institute could span 700,000 square feet.
“The decision to build the new institute came after a painful personal experience in February,” Fortune reported in its story earlier this week. “That’s when his 26-year-old daughter, Lucy, suffered a brain hemorrhage, and was found lying alone on the floor of her apartment 15 hours later.”
Lucy has since improved significantly, Ackman told Forbes.
The center will be named The Ackman Oxman Institute. Oxman is the last name of Ackman’s wife, Neri, who lost her mother to Alzheimer’s disease five years ago, which also inspired Ackman to create the new brain institute.
The timeline for the opening of the research institute is unclear, but it will be developed in partnership with Mount Sinai Hospital System.
In terms of the property, 125 West End Avenue is currently home to the scientific and research center West End Labs.
Prior to West End Labs, the building was most recently occupied by ABC/Capital Cities and was originally built to house a Chrysler parts and service facility. In between, it served as part of the New York Times’s large printing facility that once dominated that stretch of West End.
Ackman has long been connected to the Upper West Side. He lived for a period in the iconic Beresford building on Central Park West, before selling the unit in 2025. He also has a penthouse in the Upper 70s, for which he appeared in front of Community Board 7 multiple times in 2021 to successfully get a glass box extension on the top of the address.
You can read more about the massive Upper West Side real estate deal on Fortune — HERE.
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Ugh, who has $260mm to spend at will… Meanwhile, families in Kentucky can’t even buy lettuce.
Imagine what we could have done with all that money if we had a proper progressive tax system. The City could have built two proper science centers for $520mm!
No one can buy lettuce because of the parasites ☣️
People who live in glass box extensions seldom give anything back to the city. At least his institute will do something productive.
I assume you are being sarcastic.
It would be 1 science center at a cost of 10billion if the city did it.
When once in a while a billionaire does something beneficial with his/her money, I’d call it a win. No matter what his motives are, and they may be as crass as a tax break and getting his name on a shiny new facility in giant letters, a brain science center means good jobs, and possible breakthroughs in devastating diseases like Alzheimers and glioblastoma. Of course we need tax reform, but for now I’m holding my nose and saying “Thanks, Bill, and I hope Lucy is doing well.”
Wait. Are we supposed to be upset when billionaires spend their money to fund science research? And how would the city spending twice as much in 2 science centers help families in Kentucky?
Weren’t you always complaining that Ackman and other wealthy New Yorkers would pack up and move to Miami if Mamdani was elected? Obviously that wasn’t the case!
Ha-ha.. All this bla-bla rubbish going on in New York at the moment is really depressing. Obviously ‘the millionaire’ wants attention or something .. why build a ‘research center ‘ in the most expensive part of New York .. ?
Because they are already research labs that aren’t being used. It costs a fortune to build labs from scratch.
No, not me. I was the one concerned about out-migration toward Portland, OR instead.
So funny to watch him cry over mamdani, only to re-invest here
Absolutely. In Ackman’s defense, there’s not enough brain matter in FL to support a research center anyway
What about this makes you believe it is not a “proper” science center?
Kudos to Mr. Ackman. I am not president of his fan club and think it is crazy that someone can have so much wealth, but I’m glad that he is at least using some of it to try to do some good for the world. Hopefully this will help solve major health issues, and in the short term, it will create a number of jobs in the neighborhood.
Contrast this with Trump, Musk and others who continue to accumulate wealth (Trump abusing his position as president to so) and yet have made virtually zero philanthropic contributions. It is really sad. They are miserable, selfish human beings.
I greatly prefer billionaires who build cool stuff like this to billionaires who hoard their money and help nobody but themselves.
So the man who made several threats to leave NYC due to the new taxes on the rich being proposed or implemented by Mayor Mamdani is not only staying, but continuing to buy both business (and providing jobs) and residential properties.
So much for the hyperbolic “wealth flight” that many people were predicting.
Bill Ackman never threatened to leave NYC. In fact, he said pretty clearly that he planned to stay in NYC but that others would spend more time outside the City to avoid resident taxes.
We could use more brains on the UWS!
I think it’s great to spend it on human brain research rather than AI research.
On the one hand it comes off on paper as a noble cause. On the other hand it reinforces the idea that Ackman can afford the pied a terre tax off 5 minutes’ worth of interest
No one should be judging whether or not someone can afford to pay more taxes. Worry and comment about your own money, not someone else’s.
So you don’t feel comfortable judging whether a billionaire can afford the subject tax? It’s actually just “basic math”
Why? The ability of multibillionaires to pay far more tax than they do is an outrage and should greatly concern all of us.
Since Trump cut off most of scientific research, his billionaire friends need to start filling in the gaps.
If this were the case, I think that this is an ideal situation for taxpayers who don’t have to fund such projects with public money that is critically mismanaged. No reasonable person is opposed to private funding, so I agree with you that Trump might have made sound decisions to limit wasteful public funding.
You are very silly to think that medical, scientific, and public health research is “wasteful spending” when we just passed a 1.5 trillion dollar defense additional budget and spend billions a month on Ukraine, Israel, and Iran. This is the only way we find new treatments and discoveries., and cures. The government gets back a minimum of over five dollars for every dollar it spends on research. So, it is actually a very uninformed decision to cut off medical research.
You missed the gist of what I said. Public money is so mismanaged that it becomes wasteful public funding. Private funding is far superior at producing results in any venture. I didn’t say that research is wasteful spending.
Envy, a destructive emotion.
I think this is amazing news and Thank You Mr Ackman and Ms Oxman. Shame on all my bitter jealous neighbors who cannot see the benefits of such a facility and that this material investment will bring opportunities to our neighborhood. Meaningful local employment, attracting new residents who will likely be able to afford neighborhood housing, support businesses, encourage new private businesses to open around it by providing a concentration of consumers. And, let’s not ignore the possibility of finding cures and treatment options. Personally I think this will do significantly more to improve society with a potential for lasting life changes than another marijuana shop or drug site. This is a ladder up not just another partial lifeline that only creates more govt dependency. I’m sad so many of you dont see it through your green envy glasses.
Thank-you Mr. Ackman.
Also – I have for a while thought that we need a return to corporate subsidized housing as a way to address some of the housing situation. What a great area with so many residential buildings that could become part of a campus to support this facility. Where subsidized housing is provided to employees of this facility/ Everyone benefits and it’s an economic engine that fosters opportunity and achievement of self sufficiency.
Columbia already has the largest brain and neurological institute in the world, the Zuckerman Institute on its new campus in Manhattanville. He should have given the money to support their already existing labs.
I suspect under the leadership of Bill the Ackman/Oxman institute won’t serve as a breeding ground for antisemitism, protests, and activism. They will instead focus on finding cures to diseases that improve the lives of ALL people, regardless their ethnicity or religious affiliation. And perhaps it will eventually be a place where others can donate money to support causes that better society.