By Gus Delaporte 5/15 7:30am

Lease Beat

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World Class Capital Opens in New York at 540 Madison Avenue

Real estate investment and private equity firm World Class Capital has signed a lease for 2,723 square feet at Boston Properties’ 540 Madison Avenue, where asking rents range from $80 to $90 per square foot.

“They were looking to open up a New York office that reflected their business model,” Gabe Marans of Studley, who represented the tenant, told The Commercial Observer. “They wanted to be in a boutique building that had easy access to transportation and that was centrally located on the island.” Read More

By Karsten Strauss 12/19/12 7:30am

The Year in Review

year tech broke

2012: The Year Tech Invaded NYC Real Estate

This past February, 10Gen, developer of the computer system database MongoDB, was in search of new office space, specifically in tech- and media-rich Midtown South.

The company needed a large open layout for its workers, with an option for more space to allow the firm to grow—plus an option to terminate. Unfortunately, the ultra-tight market Read More

11/21/12 7:30am

Lease Beat

200 Fifth Avenue at night. (Courtesy of L&L Holdings)

Tiffany Signs For More Space At 200 Fifth, Giving It 100-Percent Occupancy

Tiffany and Co. is expanding its footprint at L&L Holding Co.’s 200 Fifth Avenue, signing for an additional 57,691 square feet of office space and bringing its total share of the building to 405,489 square feet. The deal makes the luxury jeweler 200 Fifth’s biggest tenant and sends L&L into the thick of the holiday season with the bright and shiny gift of 100-percent occupancy at the 800,000-square-foot Flatiron District property.

Studley chairman and CEO Mitchell Steir, along with the firm’s Matt Barlow, David Goldstein and Greg Taubin represented Tiffany in the deal, which had an asking rent of $85 per square foot. David Berkey and Andrew Wiener were the in-house reps for L&L. Read More

By Ian Thomas 10/16/12 7:45am

Hudson Square

Hudson Square/West Village.

Trinity Real Estate, Hudson Square, Targeting Fashion Industry Tenants

The industrial vibe of Hudson Square has beckoned media and tech firms in recent years, including New York magazine, MTV and now the New York Genome Center.

Now, analysts predict that the next industry on the list for Trinity Church, the religious institution that controls much of the area’s property, will be fashion.

Trinity Real Estate brokers lured high-end fashion designer Thakoon Panichgul into a 12,000-square-foot space at 225 Varick Street while also signing leases with Tory Burch and 3.1 Phillip Lim in recent months. Read More

By Ian Thomas 10/16/12 7:30am

Soho

CO MID-TOWN SOUTH 20, 22

Hip Retailers, Tech Startups, Compete For Scarcity of Space in SoHo

If the Midtown South office market is hot, then Soho has been scorching.

The total vacancy rate for the third quarter of 2012 was just 3.1 percent, a 1.3 percentage point drop from last year, according to a quarterly report issued earlier this month by Cushman & Wakefield. With just 47 buildings and a little more than 4 million square feet of total inventory, available space added up to slightly more than 126,000 square feet, a decline of 27.8 percent from last year, analysts told The Commercial Observer.

“There’s just a lack of inventory across the board, which will just keep pushing rents north,” said Greg Taubin, executive managing director at Studley. He added that there is “continued demand from tech-related tenants seeking the look and feel of a collaborative environment.” Read More

By Michael Ewing 8/31/12 3:31pm

Lease Beat

Courtesy of Invest Academy

Sedgwick Grabs 43,000 SF at 2 WFC

Sedgwick LLC has inked a deal at 2 World Financial Center.

The renowned law firm is set to move into a 43,000-square-foot office on the 28th floor of Brookfield Properties‘ building in the middle of October with intentions of creating an “office of the future.”

“This move will better enable our talented attorneys to continue to Read More

By Daniel Edward Rosen 1/31/12 12:17pm

Power Broker

Donald Trump Jr. (photo credit: Hannah Mattix)

Trump Card: The Rise of 40 Wall Street and its Steward, Donald Trump Jr.

“For us, we had to do something different,” said Donald Trump Jr. last week, his voice rising with excitement.

Freshly tanned from a recent visit to Mexico, where he was overseeing a new project, the slicked-back scion grew steadily more enthusiastic as he discussed 40 Wall Street, an office tower that, with its rising and falling tenant roster, has contributed to the Trump Organization executive vice president’s growing reputation as a competent steward of the family name, a reliable fixer and successful dealmaker in his own right. Read More

By Daniel Geiger 1/17/12 12:04pm

Lease of the Week

Starrett-Lehigh Building. (Courtesy Property Shark)

“The Most Complicated Deal I Personally Have Handled.”

It’s not uncommon to hear Manhattan’s real estate market characterized as sophisticated or complex.

Not every day, however, does a requirement as straightforward as Dentsu McGarryBowen’s uncork such an elaborate and interconnected series of transactions as it did at the Starrett-Lehigh Building.

A longtime tenant in the 2.3-million-square-foot building and one of the property’s largest users, the advertising firm needed to expand. But there was a small problem: Despite its size, the building—an artsy, far West Side location popular among creative tenants—had virtually no available space. Read More

By Jotham Sederstrom 11/16/11 12:46pm

The Plan

CO-Page 34-The Plan

The Plan: Quirky, 601 West 27th Street

In June, the rapidly growing product development social network Quirky inked a deal for 27,500 square feet at 601 West 27th Street, a former ministorage facility currently in the process of converting into offices for a number of other tech companies. Otherwise known as the Terminal Warehouse Building, the seven-story, 1.2 million-square-foot property near 11th Avenue was built in the late 19th Century, yet only just began leasing space to office tenants several years ago. As such, Quirky, which quadruples in size from its current space at 628 Broadway, took advantage of raw space, high ceilings and start-up friendly, loft-like floor plates. After the jump, Ben Kaufman, the company’s 25-year-old founder and chief executive and Greg Taubin, a senior managing director at the real estate firm Studley who inked the deal, reviewed the floor plan and discussed what impressed them the most.

Read More