By Gus Delaporte 5/17 11:00am

Food & Drink

Four Seasons Grill Room 2

The Four Seasons Restaurant Faces Rent Hike

The Four Seasons Restaurant, home of the “power lunch,” is facing a six-fold rent increase when its current lease expires in 2016, The Huffington Post reported yesterday. The iconic New York eatery, which currently pays $19.74 per square foot, could be looking at rents of $125 per square foot for its 29,476-square-foot space inside the Seagram Building at 375 Park Avenue.

Documents viewed by the Huff Post indicate that as part of the owners’ $782.8 million mortgage deal, financed jointly by Citigroup and Deutsche Bank and being marketed to investors via commercial mortgage backed securities, bankers expect management at the property to begin charging the The Four Seasons market rents, which according to the documents are determined to be $125 per square foot. Read More

By Gus Delaporte 5/14 12:15pm

Lease Beat

757third

Sister Companies Expand at 757 Third Avenue

Sister companies Aerotek and TEKsystems have signed 10-year leases for 13,551 square feet and 15,115 square feet, respectively, at RFR Realty’s 757 Third Avenue, it was announced today. Asking rents at the property range from the low $50s to low $60s per square foot and the total value of the transaction is over $16 million, according to a press release.

“The RFR team always works hard to provide the best services and amenities that attract and retain the best quality tenants,” said Aby Rosen, co-founder and principal at RFR, in a prepared statement. “That’s the secret of our success here and throughout the RFR portfolio.” Read More

By Al Barbarino 12/06/12 7:15am

On the Market

350 West Broadway

SoHo Retail Condominum at 350 West Broadway Could Rake in $30M

Jones Lang LaSalle has been retained as the exclusive leasing agent for the marketing and sale of the 11,115-square-foot retail condominium on the first two floors of a luxury residential building at 350 West Broadway in SoHo, The Commercial Observer has learned.

The two-story jewel box retail store is located in one of SoHo’s prime retail centers, between Grand and Broome Streets, with 80 feet of frontage along West Broadway.  The space also features an exclusive, 1,500-square-foot terrace area. Read More

By Daniel Geiger 7/11/12 5:19pm

Sales Beat

90 Fifth Avenue

90 Fifth Avenue In Contract For $115 Million

90 Fifth Avenue is being acquired by the Atlanta based investment group Jamestown for $115 million sources have revealed to The Commercial Observer, a price that equates to a lofty over $800 per square foot.

The deal, if it closes, would finally end a years long effort to sell the 140,000-square-foot property, which is mostly Read More

By Daniel Edward Rosen 12:35pm

Lease Beat

syms

City National Bank Moving into Former Syms Park Avenue Space

City National Bank is taking the 45,000 square feet of the Park Avenue space that was formerly occupied by Syms Clothing.

The Los Angeles-based bank signed a 15-year lease for a combination of office and retail space at 400 Park Avenue, including a 5,400 square foot retail banking outlet on the corner of 54th and Park, as was first reported by The New York Post. 

City National Bank’s lease also includes 15,000 square feet on the second floor that will serve as a “dramatic two-story entrance,” said Phillip (Tod) Waterman III of Waterman Interests, the landlord principal of 400 Park Avenue. Read More

By Daniel Geiger 3/13/12 2:36pm

Sales Beat

45 East 53rd Street

Santander To Sell 45 East 53rd Street

The Spanish bank Santander is marketing 45 East 53rd Street in what will likely be a sale leaseback deal.

An investment sales broker familiar with the building said that it could trade for as much as $100 million or more.

The building is about 113,000 square feet and is fully occupied by Santander, which uses the space for its New York operations. Marcos DeSillas, a facilities manager who oversees the property for Santader told The Commercial Observer that the property’s sale is being handled by executives at the bank’s headquarters in Spain. Read More

By Matt Chaban 1/17/12 5:20pm

Building Expectations

6 Photos

757 Third

Aby Rosen's Hidden Jewel

From the moment you walk through the doors of 757 Third Avenue, you know the building is different from the average, anonymous East Side office tower.

One of the lesser works of the monolithic Emery Roth & Sons—they of GM and Look and Pan Am buildings fame—757 Third is the typical wedding-cake office building. A banded obsidian glass curtain wall with those I-beam mullions, it is the sentinel we’ve seen before, cast ever so slightly anew in a thousand business districts the world over. Seagrams lite with a splash of Chase Manhattan.

That is why walking into, or really out of, 757 Third is such a dramatic experience. The 28-story building may have the nicest revolving doors in the entire city. Set into two curving, scythelike glass panels, the building’s egress does not really have an edge, and so when stepping out onto the street through those spinning doors, it is as though the building suddenly disappears. You have left the warm confines of this sleek building and are back on the cold New York City street. You might even stop to gasp at the trick if the door were not coming up behind you, about to deliver a smack in the toosh. Read More

By Dana Rubinstein 4/01/10 5:48pm

Aby Rosen Slapped with Suit for Breach of Agreement

In the waning days of the real estate boom, mogul Aby Rosen, owner of both the Seagram Building and Lever House, harbored grand ambitions for a humble six-story office building at 520 Fifth Avenue, near Times Square. Those ambitions, apparently crushed by the bust, have now precipitated a lawsuit alleging he withheld crucial financial Read More

By Eliot Brown 10/14/09 11:54am

Wolfe Grins? Rosen Gets 980 Madison O.K.–for Stumpier Tower

It’s been a long three years for Aby Rosen.

The landlord and art collector has tried for that long to get approval for an apartment tower at Madison Avenue and 77th Street designed by British starchitect Norman Foster. He’s gone to hearing after hearing at the Landmarks Preservation Commission, repeatedly rebuffed with instructions to Read More