FDIC Renews 120K SF at Empire State Building
By Rebecca Baird-Remba April 25, 2019 12:32 pm
reprints
The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), which is responsible for protecting consumers’ money in the banking system, has renewed the lease for its 119,226-square-foot offices at the Empire State Building, landlord Empire State Realty Trust (ESRT) announced in its first quarter earnings.
The FDIC first signed a 10-year lease for 100,000 square feet at the 102-story building in 2009, Observer reported at the time, moving 250 employees from its regional and field offices at 20 Exchange Place in the Financial District.
In the new deal, the agency reupped its current footprint for five years in the Art Deco skyscraper at 350 Fifth Avenue. It occupies the 12th and 13th floors of the 2.8-million-square-foot office property, according to data from CoStar Group. Asking rent in the transaction wasn’t disclosed, but recent asking rents in the building hover in the low $70s per square foot, CoStar shows.
ESRT inked 21 new leases comprising 153,506 square feet in Manhattan during the first quarter of 2019, per its earnings release, meaning that the FDIC deal represented the majority of its first quarter leases in the city. The real estate investment trust also signed a new 16-year lease for 25,294 square feet with Abrams Artists Agency at the Empire State Building.
It wasn’t clear who represented FDIC in the transaction, and ESRT didn’t immediately respond to a question about who handled the transaction in-house and a request for comment.
During this morning’s earnings call, ESRT Leasing Director Thomas Durels said that he had seen net effective rents for new office leases increase 5.5 percent year-over-year across the company’s Manhattan buildings. He was cautiously optimistic about office leasing at the company’s portfolio, which comprises nearly eight million square feet across nine buildings in Midtown and Midtown South.
“We’ve seen concessions generally leveling off and [being] offset by increased rents,” Durels noted.
