Country Bank Consolidates Operations with Retail Lease at 655 Third Avenue
By Al Barbarino March 27, 2014 7:30 am
reprintsCountry Bank has signed a new 10-year retail lease for 2,100 square feet at the The Durst Organization‘s 655 Third Avenue, Commercial Observer has learned.
The tenant will relocate from its current retail branch at 902 Second Avenue. The bank has occupied its nearly 15,000-square-foot corporate office space and New York headquarters upstairs at 655 for 15 years and jumped at the opportunity to pair their retail and office space within the same property.
“They made the move in order to consolidate their offices and retail in the same building in order to better coordinate their operations,” said Karen Kuznick, a leasing associate with The Durst Organization, in a statement.
The 425,000-square-foot property at 655 Third Avenue was the first ground up development from the Durst family, with major tenants that now include Loeb & Troper, Mitsubishi International Corporation and Nippon Life Insurance.
Marathon Ventures, an investment firm that has worked with the National Football League, Major League Baseball, NBC Universal, and Warner Brothers, renewed its 7,340-square-foot lease within the building last year.
The Durst Organization helped revitalize the corridor surrounding the former Third Avenue elevated train tracks in the 1960s with new buildings at 655, 675, 733, 825 Third Avenue, which combine for more than two million square feet of real estate.
The property at 655 was the first building with a free-standing abstract sculpture — Windward by Jan Peter Stern — on a New York City sidewalk, according to The Durst Organization. In 2004, the windows were replaced with double-glazed, grey-tinted windows, which deflect glare and reduce heat gain, and the property was recently outfitted with a renovated lobby, with turnstile security, and a green roof.
