Any other downtown deals worth mentioning?
We’re doing one deal out of bankruptcy: the sale of the Cabrini Hospital, which I think is pretty interesting. Cabrini Hospital is a 400,000-square-foot hospital in Gramercy Park. The sisters in charge tried to keep it afloat, but the building and the entity filed for bankruptcy, and we’ve been marketing the building for the sisters and the trustees. That’s been going terrifically. They’re in a very popular zone for hospital systems, so there are at least three hospital systems competing for the site as well as private developers and other health care operators. So there’s a huge demand for the site right now.
What’s happening uptown?
We’ve done a number of deals in midtown that I think were interesting this year. I would say the ticket size is a little smaller, generally, whereas maybe the average size last year might have been 25,000 square feet. People are taking a little less space than they were last year. We’ve done just about as many deals as we’ve done year over year—it’s just been a smaller square foot size.
The firms have been interesting. We’ve done a couple of deals where they are refugees from either Lehman Brothers or Morgan Stanley, where they’ve left and kind of created their own financial service company or their own hedge fund. So we’ve seen a lot of that. We just completed a very interesting transaction with Pine Brook Partners at the Lincoln Building, which is a great transaction for the landlord and for the tenant.
By the way, how was leasing activity as a whole this year?
Since January, it’s been a roller coaster. Toward January, and up until the stock market picked up in March, April and May, the mood was dour, and I think people were less inclined to make decisions long term. People who had leasing decisions sort of hung around on the sidelines, either because they weren’t certain about their firm’s future or they weren’t certain about where the market was heading and whether there was a better opportunity to buy at a period later in the market cycle. I think that those people who didn’t act in the first six months of the year began to act in June, and in June we saw a flurry of activity, even through today.
With all the doom and gloom, how do you make it to work every day?
Listen, every day is a new day. Every day you walk down a new street. In New York City, every street is paved with gold. Every time you deal with a new tenant, you’re dealing in a new industry, or new to you, with a new culture, a new set of goals and objectives. So every day is different than the day before and that’s what makes it interesting. And that’s what keeps you coming back.
jsederstrom@observer.com
