By Guelda Voien 9/13/11 1:28pm

office space

Tara Stacom of Cushman & Wakefield.

The Fall Season in Downtown

“I’m more bullish today than I was in 2007,” said Cushman & Wakefield’s Tara Stacom of  1 World Trade and the outlook for the 1,776-foot tower that will offer 3.1 million square feet of Class A office space. “I did not think one of the first tenants would be a million-plus feet.”

Signing the lease with Condé Nast in May of this year was, for lack of a less hackneyed term, a game-changer for downtown Manhattan, especially as the area emerges not only from the Great Recession but from the malaise that characterized so much of the area since 9/11. Read More

By Jotham Sederstrom 9/13/11 12:53pm

The Sit-Down

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Mitch Rudin’s Quarterly Report

In June, Mitch Rudin took the reins as Brookfield Office Properties’s president and C.E.O. of U.S. Commercial Operations following news that Ric Clark would relinquish his role as president of the Canadian firm, which controls downtown’s World Financial Center, while remaining on as C.E.O. of corporate operations. Last week, Mr. Rudin, 58, assessed his progress.

The Commercial Observer: So, why don’t you assess your progress over your first 60 days at Brookfield?

Mr. Rudin: It’s been terrific. I wouldn’t quite call this my midterm report card, but I’ve been here for two months, and to the extent that there have been any surprises they’ve all been pleasant.

What kind of surprises? Read More

By Jotham Sederstrom 9/13/11 10:57am

Power Broker

Mr. Lieber joined Silverstein in 2003.

Silverstein's Janno Lieber on the Progress at Ground Zero

Uniformed men milled about, waiting for Leon Panetta, the newly appointed Secretary of Defense, to embark on his morning tour of 7 World Trade Center. At the same time, the leader of one of the city’s most powerful trade unions was being greeted as he crossed from the building’s elevator bank to a floor model of the World Trade Center site. Heavyset and stoic, that labor leader was there to address the members of Helmets to Hardhats, an organization that assists soldiers in their transition from battlefields to construction sites.

A few hours earlier, Mayor Bloomberg had arrived in Lower Manhattan along with his own entourage, calling for the end to “Ground Zero” as the shorthand to describe what, over the course of a decade, has changed from a pile of smoldering ashes to the early metallic seeds of a transit hub, a memorial site and a massive complex of skyscrapers. Read More

By Jotham Sederstrom 9/12/11 4:06pm

Lease Beat

coffeebean

High-End Coffee Outfit Signs with Harbor

Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, which is a purveyor of bowling balls (seriously, though, they sell coffee), has signed a 1,500-square-foot retail lease on the ground floor of 1412 Broadway.

The deal at the base of the 24-story, Harbor Group International-owned building brings occupancy to 95 percent occupancy, brokers told The Commercial Observer. The company, which operates at 750 locations worldwide, has, until now, not peddled its iced coffee, green teas or signature brews from a Manhattan store. Read More

By Jotham Sederstrom 9/12/11 4:00pm

Lease Beat

100 Ave of Amer (1)

Finance Firm Expands in Trinity’s 100 A of A

Two Sigma Investments, an international finance and technology firm, has inked a five-year lease at 100 Avenue of the Americas that will allow the company to expand from its current 38,332 square feet, brokers told The Commercial Observer. Read More

By Jotham Sederstrom 9/06/11 4:00pm

Lease Beat

Upscale Footwear Walks Into 807 Washington

Fashionable club-goers and maybe even a few hog butchers will be able to navigate the brick roads of the meatpacking district in style now that Nicholas Kirkwood, the upscale designer footwear brand has inked a 1,572-square-foot retail deal at 807 Washington Street.

Located between Gansevoort and Horatio streets, the ground-floor boutique is scheduled to open by winter of 2012, broker said. As with most space—office and retail alike—asking prices have risen in the area since the High Line park opened two years ago, although specific prices at 807 Washington Street were not immediately available. Read More

By Tom Acitelli 2:07pm

office space

Those were the days. And they still are!

Ctrl-C Everlasting: Tech Firms Keep Moving to Silicon Alley, We Keep Writing About It

God bless the Silicon Alley trend piece. We’ve done one (and then another about a colony of the alley); and, incidentally, we cover the industry regularly every day here. No matter how much ink is proverbially spilled in deference to the tech industry’s growth, we as New York reporters can’t seem to get enough of the nerds-are-among-us-and-they-need-space-to-work angle. Read More

By Matt Chaban 12:49pm

Dizzying Designs

6 Photos

The night-time lighting scheme designed by Ms. Schwendinger.

Another Pretty Parking Lot For New York, This Time in the Bronx

Back in June, The Observer marveled at a parking lot the city was rehabilitating on the Lower East Side. Yes, we marveled at a parking lot. That is because the city’s Public Design Excellence program was hard at work showing utilitarian structures need not be unsightly ones. And, lo, the pretty parking lot has struck again, this time in the Bronx, at the New York Botanical Garden. Read More

By Jotham Sederstrom 8:55am

Lease Beat

Architects Double Space at 265 West 37th

Arte New York, the architectural and design firm, has signed a lease for 15,000 square feet at 265 West 37th Street. The 10-year deal, which was announced this week, will double the firm’s footprint at the building, which it moved into less than a year ago, according to brokers familiar with the transaction.

Asking rent at the fashion center building is about $30 a square foot, brokers said. Read More

By Jotham Sederstrom 8:54am

Lease Beat

(Illustration: Joel Kimmel).

New Duane Reade for 873 Broadway

It seems there will be no true end to Duane Reade’s manifest destiny.

Earlier this week, the pharmaceutical behemoth inked a 15-year, 10,000-square-foot retail lease at 873 Broadway. The renewal, announced yesterday and boasting an asking rent of $100 a square foot annually, will feature 5,000 square feet on the ground floor and another 5,000 feet below street level, said Marty Meyer, a vice chairman with Colliers International who represented the landlord, 873 Broadway LCC, in the transaction. Steve Baker and Jeff Winick of Winick Realty, represented Duane Reade. Read More

By Jotham Sederstrom 8/23/11 10:40am

The Sit-Down

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Matt Van Buren, CBRE’s New Top Guy for the Tristate

Earlier this month, Matt Van Buren stepped into his role as CB Richard Ellis’s president of the tristate region. With the new title, Mr. Van Buren’s oversight duties have grown from operations at the firm’s midtown headquarters to its activities across Long Island, Connecticut, upstate New York and Northern Jersey. The former executive managing director, 52, interrupted his vacation to talk shop. Read More

By Jotham Sederstrom 8/23/11 10:13am

Power Broker

Mr. Packman joined Trinity in November 2010.

The Hudson Square Crier

When Cushman & Wakefield accepted leasing duties at 1 Hudson Square in 2005, the building just north of Canal Street was still struggling to transcend its traffic-choked proximity to the Holland Tunnel and an address in a neighborhood nobody had really named (it’s called Hudson Square today).

Yet by seizing on a small but notable spurt in recent activity from a handful of tech firms and digital start-ups, the Cushman agents helped reposition the 1.1-million-square-foot building into a hub for the city’s creative underclass. Read More