A decade ago, a walk down Fifth Avenue near 17th Street would have included a stop at advertising firm Geer DuBois, and a walk farther north on Park Avenue South would have culminated in a visit to Angelo & Maxie’s Steakhouse.
Both were pioneering tenants, willing to take a chance on the less desirable precincts of Midtown South—and both are gone. Read More
When David Falk toured Pace University’s new dormitory at 180 Broadway in January, he was struck not only by the gleaming facilities but also by what they said about the 107-year-old school.
Mr. Falk, the New York tristate region president of Newmark Grubb Knight Frank, has worked with the university since 1999. The new building “is beautiful,” Mr. Falk said. “It’s the new Pace.”
The transformed school has helped alter the real estate landscape of lower Manhattan. In the past 15 months, Pace has inked deals for the entire 47,000 square feet at 140 William Street, renewed a 32,707-square-foot office lease at 156 William Street, and, with partner SL Green, announced plans for a 30-story dormitory at 33 Beekman Street.
The 220,000-square-foot 180 Broadway—also a joint project with SL Green—came to light in the darkest days of the recession. Pace wanted to bring about 600 beds back to its lower Manhattan campus from Brooklyn Heights. Read More
Eileen Fisher has renewed and expanded its lease at 111 Fifth Avenue. The retailer has signed a 15-year lease, adding the entire 19,000-square-foot sixth floor.
Asking rents for lower Fifth Avenue are in the low $60s per square foot, according to David Falk, president of the New York Tri-State region at Newmark Grubb Knight Frank, who represented the tenant. Eileen Fisher will now occupy a total of 62,000 square feet in the building.
Google has completed a deal to expand its presence at Chelsea Market by approximately 90,000 square feet, a source familiar with the deal confirmed with The Commercial Observer.
The tech giant’s total space at the Market will now total about 250,000 square feet. The new space is spread throughout the building, according to the source.
News of the lease was reported by the New York Post earlier this week. According to an earlier report by Crain’s, the deal includes a sublease of market research firm GFK’s fifth-floor space of 58,523 square feet. Read More
Random House continued its successful campaign to dispose of space in its namesake building at 1745 Broadway by leasing 30,000 square feet to the marketing firm Merkle.
David Falk and Jason Greenstein of Newmark Grubb Knight Frank represented the tenant. Richard Bernstein of Cassidy Turley represented the sublessor.
“We’ve subleased eight floors out of ten and disposed of about 218,000 square feet,” Mr. Bernstein said of the campaign that “started in earnest about a year ago.” Read More
New York-based real estate private equity and asset management firm Savanna has closed on its acquisition of two adjacent loft-style office buildings at 245 West 17th Street and 249 West 17th Street in Chelsea for $75.8 million, city records show.
Originally a dry goods warehouse and wagon house for the Siegel-Cooper Company department store, the property at 249 West 17th Street is a 145,000-square-foot, six-story building. The other property, equal in square footage, is 12 stories high.
The two properties have a combined 40,000 square feet of office space and are located within a couple blocks of Chelsea Market, the Meatpacking District and Google’s 111 Eighth Avenue. Read More
Robert Half International has inked a deal at 125 Park Avenue.
The world’s largest specialized staffing firm will take 38,026 square feet covering the entire fourth floor and parts of the third floor at SL Green‘s building across the street from Grand Central. Read More
Late last year, when the education publishing company Scholastic offered up about 60,000 square feet of sublease space at the top of the Soho office building 568 Broadway, the firm quickly found it wouldn’t be difficult to fill.
Within weeks, a host of tenants were competing for it, including several tech firms, one of the most active sectors of the leasing market in Manhattan right now. Tumblr, foursquare and AppNexus, all well-known names in the industry, moved to the front of the pack.
On the face of it, such a decision would seem easy. Of the three, only AppNexus, a firm that specializes in online advertising and is backed by the software giant Microsoft, is known to be profitable. But in a tech boom in which riches don’t always flow from the most likely sources, the deal for the space took a different turn.
The competition soon boiled down not to AppNexus but to Tumblr and foursquare, two companies that have become top brands in the new internet boom and have raised tens of millions of dollars in venture capital between them, but have yet to find income-producing platforms for their services. Read More
TF Cornerstone is planning a bold makeover of 387 Park Avenue South, leasing executives for the building say.
The company, which owns several prominent office properties in the city including Carnegie Hall Tower, will build an outdoor area and conference facility on the 12-story building’s roof and clad its lower floors in a new glass facade. A new lobby and elevators will also be installed as part of the project. Read More
An Israeli insurance and finance group and a local developer are partnering with SL Green Realty Corp. to build a tower for student housing at Pace University. Harel Insurance and Finance and the Naftali Group are developing a dormitory with the REIT at 33 Beekman Street. Read More
Rothschild North America, the North American division of English investment firm NM Rothschild & Sons, will be moving in to two new floors (and contiguous space) at 1251 Avenue of the Americas, the Mitsui Fudosan America-owned office tower.
The new space, on the 33rd and 34th floors, will total 69,418 square feet, as was first reported by The New York Post. Rothschild North America currently occupies the 44th and 51st floors inside the 2.29 million square foot building, where it had been since 1994, according to CoStar data. Read More
The blogging site Tumblr has signed an expansion and renewal deal for its offices at 35 East 21st Street.
The company will take about 21,000 square feet in the roughly 100,000-square-foot building, doubling in size there in a lease that stretches about four years.
Tumblr is a well known brand on the web, offering a popular platform for short form blogging and picture sharing. The company has been based out of 35 East 21st Street since nearly its inception and has grown in steady increments in recent years. Read More
Health and wellness communications company Havas Worldwide Health is taking after its parent company Havas Worldwide and will be expanding to 170,000 square feet at 200 Madison Avenue, it was announced this morning.
The office expansion will help the company consolidate its offices under one roof at 200 Madison, where Havas has held space –sized at just over 100,000 square feet– for over the past 15 years, the company said in a press release.
After a two-year search for new space yielded few results, Havas Worldwide Health decided to stay and expand inside the 26-story building, which is owned by George Comfort & Sons and Loeb Partners Realty.
David Falk and Jason Greenstein, both of Newmark Grubb Knight Frank, represented Havas Worldwide Health in the transaction. Matt Coudert of George Comfort & Sons represented ownership in-house. Read More
As The Commercial Observer reported last week, the real estate investment company Angelo Gordon is close to a deal to extend its lease at 245 Park Avenue.
On Tuesday, more details of the transaction emerged.
First, it’s not done but in advanced talks and sources expect it to close in as soon as a Read More
National retailer J.C. Penney is taking the whole shebang at 200 Lafayette Street.
The company has signed a 15-year lease for the entire 130,000-square-foot Soho building, including its 11,500-square-foot retail space, The Commercial Observer has learned. Read More
