Interpublic Group has signed a 220,000-square-foot lease at 909 Third Avenue according to people with direct knowledge of the deal.
The large advertising and media conglomerate will move several subsidiaries it controls to the new space, the largest of which will be Weber Shandwick, a major public relations firm, which will relocate from nearby 919 Third Avenue. Read More
It’s not just tech companies that have been flooding Midtown South, a neighborhood that has dramatically risen in popularity even as Midtown and Downtown have stagnated.
Firefly Value Partners LP, an investment management firm, has signed an 11,000-square-foot lease at the Starrett-Lehigh Building, the property’s owner RXR Realty announced. Read More
When the economic downturn hit, it brought real estate values plummeting. Now that prices have returned to near pre-recession levels, however, some landlords hardest hit by the distress that cropped up during the tumult could be on the hook for a hefty tax bill.
The issue traces to a common scenario in the kind of workouts that were often done to bring a building back from the brink of financial trouble.
To get at distressed property, many prospective buyers bought the debt tied to a building—often at a discount—in order to seize the asset. Rather than go through costly and arduous foreclosure proceedings, however, these note holders often dangled small continued ownership stakes in a building in order to induce the existing landlord to voluntarily hand over the keys. Read More
The State Appellate Court has thrown out a lawsuit seeking to block the sale of the Domino Sugar factory, paving the way for the real estate firm Two Trees to close on a $180 million acquisition of the property later this month.
The Katan Group, which owns the site in a joint venture with the Community Preservation Corporation Resources, launched the suit during the summer, alleging CPCR had ignored higher bids for the 11-acre parcel and therefore had not acted in the best interest of the partnership to try to maximize profits in a sale. Read More
Tocqueville Asset Management has expanded at 40 West 57th Street, a Plaza District office tower owned by the LeFrak Organization.
Sources said the company took about half of the building’s 18th floor for rents in the $70s per square foot. The deal will add about 12,000 square feet to the roughly 25,000 square feet the firm already occupies at the tower on the floor above, the entirety of 19. Read More
Real estate taxes have long been a source of ire for landlords in the city.
The city’s assessment process for commercial buildings has continually bumped up valuations for office buildings citywide over the past decade, interviews with real estate professionals and a review of data show. The result has been that tax collections on the industry have risen from about $4 billion in 2001 to $7.6 billion today, all while the tax rate—a number that is politically sensitive and which officials hence are loath to trifle with—has remained essentially the same, real estate analysts insist. Read More
The Brooklyn Nets, which will kick off their first season at the newly opened Barclays Center against cross town rivals the Knicks in November, are looking around for more space to continue to relocate operations from their former home in New Jersey.
The team has hired a brokerage team from the real estate services firm Cushman & Wakefield led by executives Bruce Mosler and Glenn Markman to lead a search for a new practice space. Read More
Bernie Madoff’s old office space is fast getting filled.
Goulston & Storrs, a law firm, just signed a deal for 19,270 square feet at 885 Third Avenue, taking the 34-story building’s entire 18th floor for rents in the $70s per square foot.
Scott Klau, who is part of an agency from the brokerage Newmark Grubb Knight Frank that handles deals Read More
1717 Broadway, a new hotel development that has the distinction of being the tallest in the Western Hemisphere, has topped out at a lofty 750-feet, the tower’s developer Granite Broadway Development and its construction manager CNY Builders announced on Thursday. The building will house a Marriott Courtyard on the lower floors and a 261-unit extended stay Read More
CrewCuts, a post production company that handles work for film and television, has renewed a nearly 18,000-square-foot lease at 28 West 44th Street, APF Properties, the owner of the roughly 370,000-square-foot building has revealed to The Commercial Observer.
The deal, which was arranged by a Cushman & Wakefield agency team led by C&W executive David Rosenbloom, stretches for 10-years. Asking rents for the space, a duplex penthouse at the top of the 22-story tower were in the mid $60s according to Ken Aschendorf, a principal at APF who oversees the company’s portfolio of commercial properties in Midtown. Read More
GroupM, the large advertising and media company, is in preliminary negotiations to anchor Three World Trade Center in a deal that would allow construction to begin on the planned 80-story office tower.
The potential lease, which is in early talks several sources said, appears to be the closest yet developer Silverstein Properties has come to realizing construction of the hulking 2.8 million-square-foot tower designed by the Pritzker-winning architect Richard Rodgers. Read More
There was a time when it seemed certain 11 Times Square would command some of the highest rents in city.
The building, which was developed by a venture between SJP Properties and its equity partner Prudential, was finished in 2010. As one of the newest buildings in Midtown, it is widely considered state-of-the-art, with many of the bells and whistles that tenants are supposed to be willing to pay a premium for, such as towering ceiling heights, LEED-certified efficient systems, a floor-to-ceiling glass façade that offers prodigious light and few structural columns to impede the efficiency of its spaces.
Entering the market at a tough juncture during the recession, SJP Properties nonetheless appeared to take a hard line on rents, and rightfully so: the building cost more than $1 billion to develop. According to several sources familiar with the property and its leasing history, the landlord held fast to projections it had set before the downturn—rents in the $80s per square foot and beyond. Read More
Bids for Worldwide Plaza are coming in below the sky-high projections sellers George Comfort & Sons and RCG Longview had hoped for when the partners (finally) put the nearly two million-square-foot office tower on the market in recent weeks.
Several sources familiar with the bidding process say that potential buyers who have stepped forward have so far offered around $1.5 billion for the property, which George Comfort and its partner purchased at the depths of the recession for around $600 million in 2009. Read More
One of the first sales in an area of Hudson Square that could soon be rezoned has closed.
100 Vandam Street, a 40,000-square-foot office building in Hudson Square, a building near the corner of Vandam Street and Greenwich Street, has been acquired for nearly $30 million, the building’s sales broker announced. Read More
421 Kent Avenue, in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, has sold for around $40 million, sources have revealed to The Commercial Observer.
It wasn’t clear immediately who the identity of the buyer was, though speculation has swirled whether it is a member of that area’s Hasidic community. The site can accommodate about 400,000 square feet of residential space, but has a restriction penciled into its deed that disallows more than 216 apartments to built on the site, a relatively sparse number of units considering the size of a potential project – the parcel is about two acres in size. Read More
