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The Plan

By Gus Delaporte 6/13 9:00am

The Plan

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Check Out Options Group’s State-of-the-Art Floor Plan

Options Group, a global executive search firm for the financial services industry with offices in California, London and Hong Kong, recently enlisted architecture firm Tirmizi Campbell to redesign the 2,200-square-foot first floor of the approximately 10,000-squarefoot building it owns at 121 18th Street. The redesign is the first step in what will eventually be a reconfiguration of the entire building.

“They’re progressive, and they all have a very good sense of design, because they travel and they deal with very high-end executives,” Asifa Tirmizi of Tirmizi Campbell, told The Commercial Observer. “They have this palette; they want it to be very high-end, so when people come, they feel very comfortable it’s up to par with what they’re used to.”

Ms. Tirmizi reviewed furniture plans last week and discussed what, exactly, drew Options Group to the new design choices. Read More

By Gus Delaporte 6/06 9:00am

The Plan

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Tour 23 Wall Street, Otherwise Known as The Corner

The former J.P. Morgan headquarters at 23 Wall Street continues to be a hard sell. For nearly seven years, the property, which has been marketed to retailers and restaurants, has remained vacant.

Complicated by its location—across from the New York Stock Exchange—and its poor loading facilities, the property, along with the connected 35 Wall Street and 15 Broad Street, has drawn interest but no commitments. Originally marketing the property specifically toward retail, the Cushman & Wakefield brokerage team has begun to open up to the possibility of entertainment or financial services firms.

Joanne Podell, vice chairman, and Ian Lerner, senior associate, spoke with The Commercial Observer about the unique challenges and possibilities the properties present. Read More

By Al Barbarino 5/31 10:00am

The Plan

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Check Out Restaurant Space Hitting the Market Near Flatiron District

When Winick Realty quietly began marketing a pair of high-end retail spaces at 28 West 20th Street eight months ago, potential suitors lined up quickly with hefty offers.

The properties, which can be combined for a total of 12,000 square feet, once housed a nightclub and are packed with lounge and amenity spaces. It’s been used as the backdrop for several big-screen productions, but while the sleek interior is fit for a range of high-end uses, with ceiling heights hitting 16 feet, the ownership group is waiting for a tenant who is not only willing to hit the competitive asking rents but carry a reputation that will brand the building and prosper for years.

“We have the luxury of not only looking for the dollar, but we want the experience,”
Winick broker Ross Burack told The Commercial Observer last week, confirming that “big name restaurants” have put in offers, but also that he’s “marketing to fitness use, health club use… really everyone,” as long as they fit the bill.

Mr. Burack sat down with The Commercial Observer for a sneak peak on the lay of the sprawling retail condo. Read More

By Gus Delaporte 5/23 10:00am

The Plan

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Check Out Former Comix Comedy Club Space Hitting Market in Meatpacking

Ideal for a flagship retail tenant, the dual-level space at 353 West 14th Street was recently vacated by Comix Comedy Club. Featuring 50 feet of frontage and soaring ceilings, the space enjoys visibility from both Ninth Avenue and 14th Street.

“Its exposure and visibility is unparalleled to anything else, because even if you’re on the other side of Ninth Avenue, your visibility is limited,” Melinda Miller of Winick Realty told The Commercial Observer last week.

After the jump, Ms. Miller points out some of the more unique features of Meatpacking District space, which Winick began marketing last week. Read More

By Gus Delaporte 5/16 10:00am

The Plan

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Check Out Prebuilts and PIOs at W&H Properties’ 250 West 57th Street

W&H Properties, a subsidiary of Malkin Holdings, has instituted two leasing programs at the repositioned 250 West 57th Street, whose operator has updated the lobby, added new elevator cabs, and renovated the public corridors, bathrooms and building systems.

The first offering is a prebuilt program, which Delta Dental has taken advantage of on the building’s sixth floor in a 2,348-square-foot space. The other is the PIO, or prepared for immediate occupancy program, which law firm Weinman Schnee Morais has opted for in a 1,862-square-foot suite on the 22nd floor.

Fred Posniak, senior vice president of Malkin Properties, spoke to The Commercial Observer about both leasing programs and spaces, offering details on the differences between them and how they appeal to individual tenants. Read More

By Gus Delaporte 5/03 9:00am

The Plan

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Check Out Malone’s New Office at 145 West 57th Street

Originally on the hunt for an office space between 2,200 and 2,500 square feet, real estate investment firm Malone looked at available space at 145 West 57th Street.

Not satisfied with the original 2,271-square-foot portion of the ninth floor it was shown, Malone instead opted to take the entire 4,368-square-foot floor plate, combining two separate spaces that, once reconfigured, will include two conference rooms, two pantries and a number of perimeter offices, including an executive corner suite.

Abe Labaton, managing director at Murray Hill Properties, who represented the tenant, spoke with The Commercial Observer last week about the layout and the process of combining spaces. Read More

By Gus Delaporte 4/26 10:00am

The Plan

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Prime Soho Retail Spot Undergoing LPC-Approved Facade Renovation

When Invesco Real Estate acquired the building at 130 Prince Street in Soho last year for $140.5 million, the firm hired Cushman & Wakefield to market the property’s retail space.

Currently, two separate retail spaces formerly occupied by Swiss Army and Lacoste boasting a total of more than 8,000 square feet are being marketed across the ground floor and cellar alongside fellow retail tenants Cole Haan and True Religion.

Steven Soutendijk, senior director at Cushman & Wakefield and a member of the leasing team, spoke with The Commercial Observer about how ownership is repositioning the building and how potential retail tenants might utilize the space. Read More

By Gus Delaporte 4/19 9:00am

The Plan

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W&H Properties Seeks Restaurateur for 1359 Broadway

The ground-floor space at 1359 Broadway, formerly occupied by Kosher Delight restaurant and The Luggage Source, is currently being repositioned as a restaurant space across three levels—ground, mezzanine and lower.

Newmark Grubb Knight Frank is marketing the 13,900-squarefoot space to be an American-style, upscale-casual restaurant with lunch, dinner and bar service.

With a location just seven minutes from Madison Square Garden and in the heart of a growing office market in Midtown, the large space at 1359 Broadway is ideally suited for a restaurant group. Jared Lack, managing director of the retail group at NGKF, spoke with The Commercial Observer last week about how the W&H Properties-owned space will benefit future tenants. Read More

By Gus Delaporte 4/12 10:00am

The Plan

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Check Out Former Bear Stearns Space, Converted to Monday Properties Marketing Center at 230 Park Avenue

Built in 1929 by the same architects hired by the Vanderbilt family to construct Grand Central Terminal, 230 Park Avenue has been updated for modern tenancy.

LEED Gold rated and awarded an EPA Energy Star in 2008, the 1.4-million-square-foot property, owned by Monday Properties and Invesco and co-brokered by Jones Lang LaSalle, has been on the forefront of real estate sustainability practices and is the first prewar building in New York to receive those distinctions.

The 71,000-square-foot seventh floor, previously occupied by JPMorgan Chase and its predecessor Bear Stearns, has been redeployed as a marketing center to allow chief executives and other decision-makers the opportunity to see facilities in a predominantly raw space. Jordan Berger of Monday Properties spoke with The Commercial Observer about the space. Read More

By Gus Delaporte 4/05 10:00am

The Plan

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Restaurateur Behind Bar Tabac and Cafe Noir Opens Clarkson in Tribeca

George Forgeois, the French restaurateur behind well-known New York bistros Café Noir and Bar Tabac, recently added a new eatery to his lineup named Clarkson. The 100-seat, European-style restaurant, located at 225 Varick Street in Tribeca, opened in February. Clarkson’s menu is based around shared plates, including oysters, charcuterie and cheese.

Mr. Forgeios’s intention was to create an informal dining experience with good food. “It’s better to come three times a week than once a month,” he said. Mr. Forgeois spoke to The Commercial Observer about the restaurant’s layout and its unique features. Read More

By Gus Delaporte 3/29 10:00am

The Plan

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Check Out Aimee Lynn Accessories’ New Fifth Avenue Space

When a long-term nonprofit tenant decided to vacate its space at 366 Fifth Avenue and relocate, the ownership group, Ronbet 366 LLC set out to reposition the property. An existing tenant in the building, Aimee Lynn Accessories, decided to expand to the newly renovated space on the building’s 11th and 12th floors, and will undertake a thorough build-out,
starting this week.

The tenant currently occupies space on the building’s fourth and sixth floors. Richard Brickell, a senior vice president representing the building’s ownership group, spoke with The Commercial Observer earlier this month about the space, where Aimee Lynn Accessories’ designers will be based. Read More

By Billy Gray 3/22 10:00am

The Plan

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Check Out Silver Suites Offices at 7 World Trade Center

Two months after Silverstein Properties announced the launch of Silver Suites Offices, the collaborative work space occupying 30,000 prebuilt square feet on the 46th floor of the 52-story 7 World Trade Center is 50 percent leased.

The milestone happened in a quarter of the time that Tal Kerret, a senior vice president at Silverstein, had expected. The popularity speaks to the growing appeal of an office model that lets upstart companies, many of them in the tech, media and public relations sectors, sign short-term leases—the minimum at Silver Suites is six months—as they grow and require increasingly large headquarters.

Abbreviated leases notwithstanding, Mr. Kerret told The Commercial Observer that Silver Suites is not “a revolving door,” but rather a “five-star, five-diamond service environment for young and growing companies.” Read More

By Jotham Sederstrom 3/15 10:00am

The Plan

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Edward Tufte’s Art Gallery Hits Market

For Stuart Siegel, an executive vice president at CBRE, 547 West 20th Street is a building that has figured prominently in the star broker’s career.

Roughly 12 years ago, he sold the five-story building to new owners while it was still a warehouse space, as much of the remote area along 11th Avenue near Chelsea was at that time. As luck would have it, however, a pair of zoning changes five years later made it possible for the owners to convert the building into residential condominiums with a pair of commercial condos on the ground floor.

Today, those ground-floor spaces are occupied by two art galleries, one leased by Elizabeth Dee, the other by the statistician and professor Edward Tufte, who also dabbles in art. While the former gallery still has several years remaining on its term sheet, Mr. Tufte’s lease is month to month, and as such, Mr. Siegel has been retained by the owners once again to market the 4,773-square-foot gallery space.

After the jump, Mr. Siegel reviews the floor plans with The Commercial Observer and discusses what, exactly, potential tenants can look forward to from the space. Read More

By Jotham Sederstrom 3/08 10:00am

The Plan

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The Plan: Check Out SBFI’s New Showroom for Trading Desks

WHEN SBFI, a vendor of financial and control room furniture, sought to relocate its showroom space, company executives repeatedly found themselves touring a web of buildings associated with Randy Sherman, an executive managing director at Murray Hill Properties who also represents Rose Hill Properties Associates.

But it was a 12-story asset at 461 Park Avenue South that solidified the company’s decision to commit to Midtown South. Despite initial worries about high rent, officials at SBFI, which counts seven of the world’s 10 largest investment banks as clients, were persuaded to move from 701 Seventh Avenue earlier this year. The change of heart, said Mr. Sherman, an executive managing director at Murray Hill Properties who represented the landlord, occurred shortly after SBFI officials were shown a clearer picture of just how tight a market Midtown South had become—yet a newly renovated lobby at the 31st Street building may have clinched the deal.

Mr. Sherman reviewed the plans with The Commercial Observer and discussed what, exactly, drew SBFI to a 4,775-square-foot, 10th-floor office earlier this year after a lease-signing in July. Read More

By Gus Delaporte 2/21 10:00am

The Plan

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Check Out New Urban Space Office In Union Square, Complete with Garden

When the DeKalb Market closed last year in Brooklyn, UrbanSpace, the U.S. affiliate of U.K.-based Urban Space Management, went looking for a new location. The provider of space for urban farmers and creative tenants had previously been leasing container space and other working plots to those with green thumbs across Brooklyn, and it was looking for an area in Manhattan that could provide a similar environment. The firm wanted to be near Union Square, because it had historically been in the area and has had involvement with the Union Square Holiday Market.

The new location, a top-floor, 5,000-square-foot space at 80 Fifth Avenue on the corner of 14th Street, provides rooftop accessibility and plenty of room for office space. Eldon Scott, director at Urban Space Management, reviewed the floor plans with The Commercial Observer and discussed what, exactly, new tenants will see when they begin moving in this week. Read More