By Gus Delaporte 4/04 4:15pm

Mergers and Acquisitions

Gregg Schenker

ABS Partners and PBS Real Estate Announce Merger

ABS Partners Real Estate and PBS Real Estate have merged, it was announced yesterday. The news follows the announcement earlier this week that Laura Pomerantz, founding partner of PBS Real Estate, has launched her own eponymous firm.

The two parties began talking about a potential merger in early February, Gregg Schenker, co-managing partner and president of ABS Partners, told The Commercial Observer. PBS Real Estate employees moved to ABS Partners’ Union Square office yesterday. Read More

By Al Barbarino 2/11 1:39pm

Lease Beat

608 Fifth Avenue

Vornado Scoops Ground Lease at Art Deco Gem Swiss Center

Vornado Realty Trust has reportedly taken control of the ground lease at the landmarked 11-story Swiss Center at 608 Fifth Avenue, where the REIT is marketing 44,440 square feet of retail space across four of its floors.

Vornado took over RFR Realty’s mortgage on the property last March with an $8.5 million payment that RFR owed to another lender and signed the ground lease on the property with the family of the late Sarah Korein, which owns the land under the building, according to the New York Post. Read More

By Al Barbarino 12/04/12 7:30am

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cover for web

Retail’s Big Renaissance

With more than 50 million tourists running amok each year, consumers feeling recharged, and throngs of foreign retailers streaming in, Manhattan’s prime retail corridors are not only booming—they’re expanding.

High rents and low vacancies in prime corridors are changing the invisible boundary lines that once separated high- and low-end sections of Fifth Avenue, Madison Avenue, Greenwich Village and other retail corridors throughout the city, analysts and real estate brokers claim.

“When these big names and huge chains move into these areas, people just love to follow them,” said Jeffrey Roseman, an executive vice president and principal with Newmark Grubb Knight Frank’s retail division. “They become anchors and magnets to pull others.”

Just as the earlier success of Urban Outfitters and H&M sparked further expansion below 49th Street on Fifth Avenue, and Alfred Dunhill and watchmaker Panerai boosted retail appeal below 57th Street on Madison when they emerged in 2009, aspirational clothing retailers are now doing the same in Greenwich Village. Read More

By Daniel Edward Rosen 12/06/11 9:00am

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Soon to be the official flag of Madison Avenue??

London Calling: UK Eyes NYC Vacancies

There’s plenty of room in the NYC retail market for a UK-based shop to make it big here.

Sweating like he was getting grilled by the fuzz, Cushman & Wakefield’s Mark Burlton, a partner in the firm’s retail services branch in London, politely fielded questions from The Commercial Observer on which European big-and-small-boxers have their Read More

By Guelda Voien 11/15/11 3:11pm

Lease Beat

Ted Baker

Ted Baker to Open Fifth Avenue Flagship

Ted Baker, the high-end clothing retailer, will open a flagship store at 595 Fifth Avenue, it was announced today.

The U.K.-based company signed a long-term net lease for 12,000 square feet at the corner of 48th Street and Fifth Avenue, just down from retail icon Saks Fifth Avenue. Ted Baker will use three of the five floors of the building, which they will rent in its entirety, for retail, while the balance are for office and showroom uses. Just a block from high-profile tenants Michael Kors and LaCoste, the space could command up to $2000 per square foot, sources not affiliated with the deal speculated. Read More