Stat of the Week

Class A Average Asking Rents by Submarket.

$64.59

The Manhattan Class A average asking rent took a step back in February, closing the month at $64.59 per square foot, down from $65.06 per square foot in January. It’s way too early to look at this as a trend. Likely, it is an anomaly as some higher priced availability across Midtown was leased and not included in the latest numbers. Read More

Financing

dreamworks

Starwood, Blackstone Partner to Save Office Complex

Greenwich, Connecticut-based Starwood Capital has brought in Blackstone as a partner to save its investment in the 1.7-million-square-foot Pacific Shores Center office complex in Redwood City, Calif. The partners are now looking for a $275 million mortgage to get rid of the property’s overdue debt. Read More

Leasing Woes

Mr. Minskoff not pictured.

A Whole Lotta Space Up for the Takin’ in 2013, WSJ Sez

While leasing activity for much of New York City in the past few months has been more lackluster than blockbuster, a sizable chunk of available space –sizable in the, say, 6 million square foot range– is on the cusp of hitting the market, The Wall Street Journal reports.

New developments like 1 World Trade Center, 4 World Trade Center, and Edward Minskoff’s 51 Astor Place, are all slated to hit the market in 2013. The last time NYC had this much new space becoming available was in 1989, said Cassidy Turley’s Robert Sammons. Read More

Stat of the Week

Manhattan Sublease Availability.

8,880,280

Manhattan overall sublet availability took a nosedive in January to 8,880,280 square feet from 9,795,469 square feet in December. It has now fallen to its lowest figure since the 8,623,604 square feet recorded in August 2008—in other words, since just one month prior to the Lehman Brothers collapse of September 2008. At that time, financial services firms (and other industries) had already begun to dump large blocks of sublet space on the market. Read More

lease beat

Nonprofit Leasing by Submarket.

Nonprofit Leasing Stands Firm: Report

Nonprofit and public sector tenants took a total of 2.6 million square feet in 2011, approximately the same amount it leased a year earlier, but committed to much larger leases than in the previous year, according to a new report released yesterday by Cassidy Turley. Read More

Stat of the Week

stat

Stat of the Week: 82

The number of Manhattan buildings with at least 100,000 square feet of (potential) availability (contiguous or noncontiguous) has climbed over the past year to 82 from 77, though it is down from 84 two years ago. The figures quoted are a catch-all including space currently vacant, known to have a tenant moving out or that is new construction with a completion date.

Read More

Commercial Observer

January 4, 2012 (8)

An Evening at the Liar’s Ball: Raucous Behavior! Bottles of Colgin at the 21 Club! Talking Over the Cardinal?

It was a typical evening at the Real Estate Board of New York’s annual gala as John Cardinal O’Connor stepped up to the dais to address a crowd of several thousand of the city’s most ambitious commercial real estate brokers and owners.

But in a ritual repeated more or less each year, the archbishop of the New York archdiocese’s 2.37 million Catholics and one of the Vatican’s most forceful spokesmen in the United States during the 1980s, was summarily ignored by a brokerage community far more interested in making deals than in hearing the Gospel. Read More

Leasing Assignments

Colliers

Colliers Named Agent for 245 Fifth Avenue

Brokerage firm Colliers International has been named the exclusive leasing agent for 245 Fifth Avenue, a Midtown South building co-owned by The Moinian Group and Thor Equities.

The 303,000-square-foot Class A building has received pre-build improvements to its mid-level and tower floors, which will have an added emphasis on high-end finishes and glass front offices, the company said in a press release. Sizes for those floors range from 2,000 to 9,000 square feet. Read More

lease beat

330 Madison Avenue

Guggenheim Partners Seals Deal at 330 Madison Avenue

Guggenheim Partners, an investment firm that grew from administering the vast private wealth of the Guggenheim family in the early 1900s to a multifaceted financial firm, has signed a large lease at 330 Madison Avenue for its New York headquarters, sources revealed.

The deal comes one month after The Commercial Observer first reported that Guggenheim was looking to take space at the building in November. Read More