Morgan Stanley has inked the year’s largest sublease with an 11-year deal for 148,421 square feet of space at Vornado Realty Trust’s 1290 Avenue of the Americas.
The space is across the entire 12th and 13th floors, part of AXA Equitable’s 443,599 square feet in the 44-story, 2-million-square-foot tower, according to The Real Deal, which Read More
State Street Bank has signed a 10-year lease for 105,951 square feet at Vornado Realty Trust’s 1290 Avenue of the Americas, a source familiar with negotiations confirmed with The Commercial Observer.
State Street will take space formerly occupied by Microsoft, which opted to relocate to 11 Times Square, as The Commercial Observer reported late last year. The tech giant’s 230,000-square-foot lease was the third largest deal of 2012. Read More
Midtown Manhattan, the biggest and most expensive U.S. office market, is still adapting to New York’s post-financial-crisis economy, as technology and new media companies flood into the more affordable areas and banks remain wary of expanding in higher-priced real estate.
With construction getting under way on millions of square feet of planned Class A offices on the West Side, much of the leasing action for the year to date has centered on neighborhoods like Murray Hill, the Penn Station area and the Garment District, which are attracting companies that have been priced—or crowded—out of the technology hub in Midtown South, brokers said. Financial companies, traditionally the biggest occupiers of Midtown real estate, remained conservative, pursuing greater efficiency in their use of real estate rather than growth.
“The days of bigger is better are gone,” said Eric Thomas, senior vice president of Cresa, a specialist in tenant representation. “Capital preservation is still key. That’s why renewals still reign in many cases.” Read More
The Manhattan office leasing market experienced a jump in activity of 19 percent year-over-year from February 2012, according to the March 2013 Manhattan Marketview Snapshot from CBRE. Leasing activity was also up nine percent over January 2013, the report noted.
“February leasing remained below the 60-month monthly average, so the increase in activity compared to one year ago at this time signals an improvement of the market,” said Matt Maison, Manhattan manager, research and analytics at CBRE.
The overall availability rate in Manhattan rose 20 basis points in February to 12.5 percent. Average asking rents rose two percent, or $1.12, to $60.56 per square foot, representing an increase from February 2012, when average asking rents were $54.40 per square foot. Read More
If you were a New York Mets fan in 1986, like former Mayor Ed Koch was, the number 19 was a good thing.
That year, while rents were flat at an average of $40 per square foot despite 35 million square feet of new construction, the Mets acquired a left-handed pitcher who wore the number 19 and helped propel the team to a World Series Championship. Read More
For the first time in recent history, the availability rate across Manhattan’s stock of Class B buildings is lower than that of their Class A counterparts, suggesting a flight to value, propelled in part by the latest wave of technology startups and media companies looking for affordable space. Indeed, at 10.6 percent, the current availability rate for Class B space is 170 basis points less than the Class A rate of 12.3 percent, according to Richard Persichetti of Cassidy Turley.
With Cassidy Turley’s help, The Commercial Observer decided to put a spotlight on some of the most dramatic occupancy shifts across Manhattan over the last three years. Read More
Months of negotiations between SPJ Properties and Microsoft have finally paid off, with the tech giant signing a 230,000-square-foot lease at its new Midtown headquarters at 11 Times Square – and solidifying one of the top leasing deals of the year.
The company eyed the new space for months, as rumors swirled it would be vacating Vornado’s 1290 Avenue of the Americas, and last month transaction is the third biggest non-renewal leasing transaction of 2012. Read More
Negotiations over outdoor signage at 11 Times Square, among other issues, has delayed a deal between SPJ Properties and Microsoft expected today, sources told The Commercial Observer.
After eyeing the space for months, the company was shuffling papers around this week with owner SPJ Properties to get the deal completed; but the signing of a letter of intent, which sources said was scheduled to happen today, likely won’t be completed until after Thanksgiving, said people familiar with the deal.
The 16-year lease is for 260,000 square feet across floors four through 11, at a rate in the low $60’s, a broker who reviewed a preliminary version of the lease said. Read More
Steven J. Pozycki has reeled in his white whale as one of the most sought after tenants in the entire city has landed at one of its most troubled office towers. According to numerous sources, Microsoft is poised to sign a long-term lease for 400,000 square feet at 11 Times Square, the office tower Mr. Pozycki’s New Jersey-based SJP Properties built just as the real estate bubble was bursting.
For months, the Seattle-based software company has been looking at new offices in New York as it mulled whether or not to leave its current home at 1290 Avenue of the Americas. Microsoft had been looking at space across Manhattan, but it seemed to have a special affinity for the West Side, having strongly considered Mort Zuckerman‘s swiftly rising 250 West 55th Street. For a time, Microsoft appeared interested in 11 Times Square but its focus faded in favor of other opportunities, until a last minute pitch by SJP brought the building back into the running and helped seal the deal. Read More
Abbott Capital Management, a private equity firm, has inked a 10-year lease to take new office space at 1290 Avenue of the Americas, it was announced Tuesday.
The firm will be taking a 34,709-square-foot space on the ninth floor at 1290 Avenue of the Americas, which is managed by Vornado.
John Thompson, senior director of JRT Realty, represented Abbott Capital Management in the lease deal. Franklin Speyer, Amy Fox, Michael Nahmias and Bruce Mosler, all of Cushman & Wakefield represented Vornado in the deal. Read More
Microsoft has been bumped from 250 West 55th Street, leaving it with two likely space possibilities: a renewal deal at its current home at 1290 Avenue of the Americas or a relocation to 11 Times Square several sources familiar with the company say.
The company had been in advanced talks to take space at the Read More
In a leasing market starved for activity, eyes in the brokerage business have turned to Microsoft, which is on the cusp of a roughly 225,000-square-foot lease for its Manhattan headquarters.
The software company, according to sources with direct knowledge of its real estate decision making, has whittled its choices to two locations, a renewal at its current home in 1290 Avenue of the Americas or a move to a new office tower being built on Eighth Avenue by Boston Properties, 250 West 55th Street. Read More
Leasing has been off pace in the first half of the year and the slowdown hasn’t played out at the city’s fringes.
Sixth Avenue, one of the Midtown’s central corridors that is often referred to as Corporate Row because of the large, regal office buildings there and the avenue’s roster of Fortune 500 companies, appears poised to become flush with vacancies. Read More
The success of 200 Fifth Avenue has served in many ways as the template for 28-40 West 23rd Street, and no doubt many other buildings in Midtown South. The building’s developer, L&L Holding Co., guessed the popularity of the neighborhood and bet a big reinvention of the property would draw top-shelf tenants, a gamble that paid off when it landed Grey Advertising and Tiffany & Co. Now the landlord of 28-40 West 23rd Street is in the middle of a similar kind of makeover. The Cohen, Roos and Carmel families, who together own the 600,000-square-foot tower, have plans to create a roof deck and have done deals with tech companies that are invading the neighborhood in droves. After the jump, The Commercial Observer talks to Andrew Roos, a Colliers International leasing executive and an owner of 28-40 West 23rd Street. Return at 10:30 today for a second installment with David Berkey, L&L’s director of leasing. Read More
For much of the past decade the only hope for a broker looking to make money off of Downtown office space was to do a deal like 70 Pine Street: Take a lavish 62-story Art Deco headquarters that was once owned by a spectacularly failed financial firm like AIG and turn it into opulent apartments where bankers would rather live than work.
Deals like 70 Pine Street, which instantly wiped off one million square feet from Downtown’s commercial real estate inventory when it was sold for $200 million in 2011, have been propping up statistics for the neighborhood’s office space market for years. Ever since large banks and financial companies started fleeing offices in the financial district, an influx of young families and bankers wanting to live Downtown, rather than just work there, have kept the vacancy rate from tanking even further by reducing the math on the supply end.
Now, say the brokers who have long suffered the horrors of Downtown’s commercial market, those residential conversions are starting to also pay off on the demand side. A flurry of infrastructure and amenities building to keep up with the new residents in the neighborhood is also making the area more enticing for large corporations to move in.
“It’s a chicken-and-egg scenario,” said Mark Shapses, executive managing director at Studley. “Downtown is seeing the light at the end of the tunnel.” Read More
