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commercial real estate

lease beat

High-Brow Coupon Concern Lands Union Square Digs

If whipping out a crumpled coupon following dinner at Le Cirque doesn’t exactly appeal, this might be the start-up for you. E-coupon innovator Village Vines has landed its first grown-up office.

“When we went to see the space, it helped that the agent said, ‘I know what you guys are. I just used you!’” the tenant’s broker, Elliot Warren of The Kaufman Organization, told The Observer. Village Vines then successfully landed its first 2,500-square-foot permanent digs near Union Square for five years at 37 West 17th Street.


The company is less than a year old, so for the less technologically inclined, he explained the concept thusly: Read More

lease beat

Colorful Hunt Slonem Lands Near 10th

Man of many mansions Hunt Slonem has garnished a new far West Side space.

The Southern painter-cum-interior designer has taken 22,500 square feet for 10 years at 509 West 34th Street, past 10th Avenue. The four-story industrial building over a parking garage has a few columns and windows on three sides, offering the perfect canvas for Read More

lease beat

MySpace Marketing Gurus Sextuple Space

Big Fuel Communications, the braintrust behind MySpace's marketing campaign, are massively growing their Manhattan headquarters.

The social media marketing and branded content agency has taken 40,000 square feet at 40 West 23rd Street, which also houses Home Depot's Chelsea store. We should clarify they did some work for MySpace and Fox a few years ago, and also Read More

Features

The Top 20 Office Leases of 2010

"Banks started to feel a lot better, businesses started to stabilize," said CB Richard Ellis' Ken Meyerson, reflecting on 2010. "There was a risk of it starting to get better and better."

Mr. Meyerson, who helped broker 2010's largest lease for tenant Société Générale, was not alone in eyeing the recovery in the office-leasing market and Read More

Wall Street

Morning Roundup: A Novel Approach to Insider Trading

  • Someone at the Securities and Exchange Commission had the bright idea to stop targeting specific insider trades and instead try to bring down entire communities of Wall Street lawbreakers. This notion has been at play in last year's massive Galleon case and also yesterday's government raids on three big hedge funds. [WSJ]
  • There have been Read More

Up Up and Away

Air China Lands at Empire State Building

Air China, the official airline of the Communist regime, is moving into some swanky new space on the 69th floor of the Empire State Building. Apparently the looming threat of 15 Penn Plaza was just that, as Fred Posniak, a W&H Properties executive suggested in a release announcing the deal today.

"International brand-name companies appreciate the Read More

Your Office Is Shrinking

If you've noticed your office feels smaller lately, it might not be your imagination.

The average size of office transactions has fallen by about 50 percent since 1997, The Real Deal reports. That means it's time to get a little cuddlier with your co-workers, as employers replace private offices with shared spaces and open floor Read More

The Reformed Accountant

When August DiRenzo reported to legendary Cushman & Wakefield honcho Jim Peters on his first day of work as a broker in the mid-1960s, the upstart asked a simple question.

“O.K., what do I do?”

“Look out the window,” said Mr. Peters, peering from his Cushman office tower, then located on Madison Avenue, 13 blocks south of Read More

New York’s Most Exclusive Office Building

In the late 17th and early 18th centuries, the Gobelins manufactory wove tapestries for Louis XIV, the absolutist French ruler, who espoused the theory of the divine right of kings. According to that theory, dauphins were not merely born lucky onto plush velvet thrones of ungodly wealth and power. No, they actually carried the mark, Read More