Speyers Leasing a Swanky Block of 30 Rock

A block of space of more than 220,000 square feet is available for rent at 30 Rockefeller Plaza, the signature skyscraper of the city’s illustrious landlord Tishman Speyer.

The available block is easily the swankiest swath of Manhattan office space available this year, with asking rents ranging between $130 and $150 per foot, an executive with the landlord said. For the well-heeled tenant that takes the entire contiguous block, rent would be about $30 million per year.

“I think it’s one of the prized spaces available in Manhattan and in Tishman Speyer history,” said Ted Koltis, a managing director of leasing at Tishman Speyer. “This would be the biggest block that we have had since we owned Rockefeller Center.”

Tishman Speyer, with real estate holdings at the Chrysler Building, the MetLife Building and Stuyvesant Town, will place the space on the market less than a month after it closed on its $222 million purchase of several floors from NBC at 30 Rock, which The Observer reported first earlier this month.

The block is between floors 22 and 27 and will come together over the next two years. The 27th floor is vacant; the 25th and 26th floors, which were both owned by NBC, will be vacated by the end of 2008; the 24th floor is available in 2009, maybe sooner; the 22nd and 23rd floors, currently subleased by the law firm Dechert, will be available in the middle of 2008.

Big-space users generally sign leases well in advance, so there very well could be a lease-out before the end of the year.

The Speyers bought into Rockefeller Center in 1996. When they purchased the iconic complex, it was aging and musty, a sleeping giant in midtown with dreary retail tenants like airline ticket offices. Since Jerry Speyer claimed control, however, he has completely transformed Rock Center by raising rents and the profile of its tenants and, now, has catapulted it into the land of triple-digit office rents.

The prospective tenant that takes the massive block will share the 70-story skyscraper with the likes of NBC, General Electric, Lazard Ltd and Baker Botts.

“The tenant roster is second to none,” said Mr. Koltis. “Anyone who is coming in the building would certainly be a part of that.”

Big new leases signed this year, like Lehman Brothers at the Time-Life building or Viacom in Hudson Square, have caused the real estate world to ooh and ahh at the overall health of the market, but there’s one thing missing from all those deals: the cachet of a 30 Rock.