The New York Observer » Office Leasing

Downtown Looking Up: The Offices of Wall Street Are Occupied Like It’s 2007!

All that clangor coming from Zuccotti Park, the chanting and beating of drums—what if it is not a protest of economic inequality and corporate malfeasance but instead a celebration? For there is good reason to revel downtown, as the office leasing market is having a bit of a boom. Wall Street may be occupied, but so are the commercial spaces surrounding it, according to a new report to be released tomorrow by the Downtown Alliance.

Lower Manhattan has seen a rise in office occupancies across a wide swath of industries, from the typical FIRE firms to media and healthcare concerns. The neighborhood is on track to have its best year since 2006, with 4.8 million square feet leased up through the third quarter of 2011. Read More

The Fall Season in Downtown

“I’m more bullish today than I was in 2007,” said Cushman & Wakefield’s Tara Stacom of 1 World Trade and the outlook for the 1,776-foot tower that will offer 3.1 million square feet of Class A office space. “I did not think one of the first tenants would be a million-plus feet.”

Signing the lease with Condé Nast in May of this year was, for lack of a less hackneyed term, a game-changer for downtown Manhattan, especially as the area emerges not only from the Great Recession but from the malaise that characterized so much of the area since 9/11. Read More

The Hudson Square Crier

When Cushman & Wakefield accepted leasing duties at 1 Hudson Square in 2005, the building just north of Canal Street was still struggling to transcend its traffic-choked proximity to the Holland Tunnel and an address in a neighborhood nobody had really named (it’s called Hudson Square today).

Yet by seizing on a small but notable spurt in recent activity from a handful of tech firms and digital start-ups, the Cushman agents helped reposition the 1.1-million-square-foot building into a hub for the city’s creative underclass. Read More

Condé Nast Leads the Creative Types in Dominating Downtown Relocations

Does not reading Vogue mean the terrorists will have won? Read More

Paul Glickman, Jones Lang LaSalle’s Transformer

At first glance, the 11-story property on 11th Avenue near 47th Street hardly seemed the ideal candidate to become Manhattan’s next big office building.

Situated on the far West Side, the 98-year-old building at 636 11th Avenue was destined for a full-blown hotel or condominium conversion when the Hakimian Organization purchased a stake in it in 2005. Indeed, what corporate tenant in its right mind would willingly wander so far west? Or at least that’s what Ben Hakimian thought. Read More

Number of 100K-Foot Office Leases Up in 2011—Way Up

On the heels of learning that trophy towers are once more commanding three-figure rents, we learn that big chunks of space, once tut-tutted amid the Great Recession's layoffs, are getting long looks again by tenants. Read More

Big-Time Law Firm Deal at Brookfield’s Grace Building

In one of the biggest law firm deals this year in New York, intellectual property specialists Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton has taken 45,000 square feet at the Grace Building at 1114 Avenue of the Americas.

The deal, which comes six months after Kilpatrick Stockton merged with Townsend and Townsend and Crew, allows the legal practice to now double its size from its current 22,500 square feet at 31 West 52nd Street, brokers said. At the 49-story, Brookfield Office Properties-co-owned Grace Building, the firm will occupy the entire 21st floor and a portion of the 22nd. Read More

Investment Firm Takes Five Years at 130 East 59th

Augusta Columbia Capital, a recently launched investment firm, has signed a five-year, 7,281-square-foot lease at 130 East 59th Street.

The tenant sought to open its doors quickly and the UJA Organization-owned building offered a high-end pre-built installation that fit its needs, brokers said. The direct lease, which will begin this month after the firm vacates its temporary space at 345 Park Avenue, will encompass a portion of the 17-story building’s 14th floor at an asking rent of approximately $53 per square foot. Read More

Advantage, Landlords: Bell Tolls for Prospective Tenants in Midtown Trophies

For a while there, the cost of Class A office space in New York was tumbling amid thousands of layoffs, the Great Recession, cats and dogs living together, etc. Landlords were having to concede incentives like free rent and comped upgrades; and tenants were jumping at deals in addresses that in frothier times had higher barriers of entry.

That appears to have changed. Read More

The Nomura Move’s Real Impact on Downtown

Japanese bank Nomura's decision to move out of the World Financial Center downtown and take 900,000 square feet at Worldwide Plaza in midtown is undoubtedly a blow for the tip of the island's commercial future. The move will leave a huge vacancy at the Brookfield Properties-owned complex just as 3 million square feet of leases there are ending in 2013. (We saw the move coming in mid-May.)

But it's more than just the vacancy.

Read More

40 Worth It! 10-Year Deal After Buy-Out, Build-Out

The Center for Family Representation—a nonprofit legal services and policy firm for poor families—has inked a 13,400-square-foot transaction in Lower Manhattan, brokers said. The nonprofit, which previously operated at 116 John Street, signed a 10-year lease at 40 Worth Street, the 84-year-old home to Gap Inc. and other office tenants. Denham Wolf Real Estate Services, Read More

David Winoker: Call It Whatever You Want, It’s Always the Garment Center

As president of Winoker Realty, David Winoker has greatly expanded the firm from its relatively modest roots under his father’s leadership. Its presence is most conspicuous in the Garment Center, where a majority of the firm’s 32 properties reside. Mr. Winoker, 48, spoke with to The Observer earlier this month about that neighborhood’s present and what he has in mind for its future.

The Observer: Winoker has a large portfolio of assets in the Garment Center. Where is the neighborhood heading and where is it at now, tenant-wise?

Mr. Winoker: It’s changed over the years and you have more office tenants continually signing leases in this neighborhood. It still has excellent transportation and subway access, and a lot of the buildings have undergone major renovations and redevelopment. So it’s not purely garment anymore.

Clearly, we still have buildings that will house showrooms and dress companies. They’re here and they’ll be here for a long time. But the world has changed, and it’s been changing for years.

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Wall Street Is Back in the Hunt

As Wall Street continues to swagger back from the brink, once again enjoying outsized profits and sneering at federal regulators, it means good news for at least one group of New Yorkers: landlords.

As The Journal reports today, no fewer than eight major banks are each looking for at least 500,000 square feet of office space in the city. They are hunting for bargains as much as anything, taking advantage of lower rents while uncertain of their own futures and that of the economy:

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Bill Rudin Gets Some Talent at 41 Madison

Nothing takes us back to that halcyon year of 1996 as does seeing the likes of Michael Ondaatje and Drew Carey in the same paragraph. In a delightful blast from the not-so-distant past, the stars' respective talent agencies have renewed at the Rudin family's 41 Madison Avenue. The Gersh Agency, who, in addition to a svelter Read More

Condé Nast’s Cafeteria Vent: Almost a Dealbreaker at 1 WTC

Condé Nast almost walked away from its 25-year deal with the Port Authority for 1 million square feet at 1 World Trade Center (neé the Freedom Tower). Why?

Because the Port balked at installing a cafeteria ventilation shaft that would have, according to the New York Post's Keith Kelly, "blast[ed] ... out the southern wall, which some sources felt would have marred the aesthetics of the sheer glass façade overlooking the memorial."

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