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The Plan

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

CO Page 102 - The Plan

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

CO Page 34 - The Plan

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

CO Page 38 - The Plan

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

CO Page 34 - The Plan

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

CO Page 30 - The Plan

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

CO Page 46 - The Plan

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

CO Page 34 - The Plan

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

CO Page 38 - The Plan

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

CO 2-19 The Plan

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

By Gus Delaporte 2/14 10:00am

The Plan

CO 2-12 The Plan

Check Out George Soros’ New Open Society Institute Offices

In 2010, the Open Society Institute, the administrative hub of the Open Society Foundation, George Soros’s left-leaning think tank, began searching for a new 150,000-square-foot space in Midtown, and it enlisted the architectural help of Tirmizi Campbell alongside lead architect HLW.

The nonprofit explored a number of different types of spaces, including whole buildings and three-floor leases in larger buildings. In the first half of 2011, however, the Open Society Institute settled on a 160,000-square-foot space at 224 West 57th Street. Aside from a ground-floor TD Bank branch, the organization will occupy the entire 10-story building, which it is scheduled to move into later this month.

Asifa Tirmizi and Scot Campbell, partners at Tirmizi Campbell, reviewed plans on floors two and eight last week with The Commercial Observer and discussed what, exactly, drew the organization to 224 West 57th Street. Read More

By Billy Gray 2/07 11:00am

The Plan

CO Page 34 - The Plan

Check Out Available Space at the General Motors Building

The 50-story General Motors Building at 767 Fifth Avenue is among the most sought-after properties in New York. It’s the rare building that takes up an entire city block, situated across from the Plaza and Central Park and bounded by Fifth and Madison Avenues, in one of the top shopping districts on the planet.

Cushman & Wakefield is currently marketing a 6,514-square-foot ground-floor retail space that was made available when CBS moved its morning show’s studio to Hell’s Kitchen last summer. Prospective tenants can count on blockbuster neighbors like the Apple Store and, also in 767 Fifth Avenue, FAO Schwarz to reel customers in to a tall, airy space.

C&W Senior Director Steven Soutendijk reviewed the plan with The Commercial Observer and discussed, what exactly, the space has to offer. Read More

By Al Barbarino 1/25 9:00am

The Plan

CO Page 34 - The Plan

Check Out Bank of East Asia’s New Madison Avenue Office Plans

Shortly after China-based Bank of East Asia announced it would relocate from 202 Canal Street in Chinatown, banking executives signed off on renovation plans at the bank’s new 10th-floor headquarters at 540 Madison Avenue.

Previously occupied by SAC Capital, the space will be demolished and rebuilt, resulting in an array of sun-soaked, sleek perimeter offices lined with glass panels and interior workstations that allow for a mix of privacy and collaboration, all wrapped up in a prime Midtown location. The 10,900-square-foot deal set off a string of other lease signings: Conquest Capital Group, Hakluyt Co. and Ajax Advisors followed suit at the building, which is made up of various boutique financial firms, law firms and hedge funds.

“They were looking for a quality building, a boutique building where they could have a full floor and an identity—they weren’t looking at big corporate office buildings,” said Cynthia Wasserberger, a Jones Lang LaSalle broker who represented landlord Boston Properties.

Along with Boston Properties’ Adam Frazier, Ms. Wasserberger reviewed floor plans with The Commercial Observer and discussed what, exactly, drew the bank from Chinatown to 540 Madison Avenue. Read More

By Jotham Sederstrom 1/17 7:30am

The Plan

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REBNY’s Grand Ballroom Seating Chart

They enter alone and in small groups, often single file, but by the time the city’s brokers, politicians and landlords reach the mezzanine level of the New York Hilton, they’ve already fanned out into concentric circles, each composed of friends and colleagues.

And as the room continues to fill each year, so too do those clusters of men and women, each one separated by a mere foot or two from the next, and the next and the next. Indeed, with an estimated 2,200 guests expected to attend this year’s Real Estate Board of New York gala, those small footpaths will only narrow, making it more challenging than ever to connect with allies or retreat from rivals.

It’s with these considerations in mind that we at The Commercial Observer and REBNY have compiled a comprehensive seating chart inside the Hilton’s Grand Ballroom, where employees of firms including Vornado Realty Trust (front and center) and the law firm Morrison & Foerster (near the bathrooms) can all eventually be found, or avoided, whichever the case may be.

Take a look before the lights dim, draw up a plan and use this map, above and on the next page, as a resource. Read More