Advertising Spin-Off DDCD & Partners Moves to 17 State Street

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To help its efforts, RFR redid the building’s plaza area and made other improvements, such as cleaning its metal and glass facade.

“We polished the gem,” said Steve Morrows, a top leasing executive at RFR who normally manages the firm’s Midtown portfolio but whom the company brought in to oversee the property’s lease up.

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In marketing materials, RFR Realty positions 17 State Street as part of a signature collection of assets, alongside its highest profile properties the Seagrams Building and Lever House in Midtown.

“It was a building that immediately caught our attention,” Mr. Iacovelli said. “You get a sense of what a high-end property it is.”

When Mr. Iacovelli showed it to DDCD, the company’s executives were enthralled, scheduling tour after tour to show the space to all of its partners and executives. Whereas in Midtown South the firm had often encountered tepid interest from landlords comfortably in possession of the upper hand in leasing negotiations, RFR was refreshingly eager to accommodate the company.

“We want this building to be a place for the advertising industry just as it has appealed to financial and law firms,” Mr. Morrows said, noting that DDCD is the first advertising company to come to 17 State Street.

A lease was quickly drawn up for DDCD to take the building’s entire second floor, a 13,100-square-foot space that RFR had previously outfitted with prebuilt offices. Rent in the deal, like for most space in the building, was in the $40s per square foot. The transaction struck a balance between quality, convenience and affordability that DDCD had begun to fear was unattainable. Had DDCD waited much longer, the opportunity may very well have vanished.

Mr. Morrows, who leases 17 State Street with RFR colleagues AJ Camhi and Ryan Silverman, estimated that about 75,000 square feet of deals have closed at the property so far in the 2011. He said he expects another 65,000 square feet of deals to be finished by the end of the year, taking the property’s once bulging vacancy to nearly zero.

dgeiger@observer.com