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The relentless real-estate investment firm is in contract to purchase another national portfolio from Beacon Capital Partners, which includes two Manhattan prizes, a source familiar with the deal said. The sale price for the portfolio is expected to be close to $5 billion.

The Partners’ newest city assets are the Park Avenue Atrium and 100 Wall Street.

The Park Avenue Atrium, at 237 Park Avenue, is at the corner of Lexington Avenue, between 45th and 46th streets. It is across the street from the MetLife Building and a few blocks from the Partners’ other treasured asset, 340 Madison Avenue.

The Atrium is 1.1 million square feet, and its main tenants include Bear Stearns and J Walter Thompson. As The Observer reported first, Bear Stearns recently expanded to more than 250,000 square feet in the building.

Broadway Partners, led by Mr. Lawlor, the C.E.O., will take over the 90 percent stake that Beacon had at 237 Park, a second source said. Monday Properties will remain as the minority owner at the building.

Meanwhile, the Partners’ other new city tower is at 100 Wall Street. The 29-story, 458,000-square-foot building is at the corner of Water Street. It was purchased by Beacon in 2005 for $134 million, and its tenants include the GFI Group, Harris Beach and Bollinger Insurance.

For Broadway Partners, this will be the second portfolio the company has purchased from Beacon in less than six months. The first portfolio sold for reportedly more than $3.3 billion and included the John Hancock building in Boston.

The San Francisco Business Times reported last week that Broadway Partners had purchased this second portfolio from Beacon.

But both Broadway and Beacon are remaining quiet for now.

“It’s our policy not to comment on deals that haven’t closed,” said Charles Millard, a managing director at Broadway Partners. A spokesman for Beacon also declined to comment.

The seven-year-old Broadway Partners keeps increasing its Manhattan profile. As The Observer reported, the real-estate firm is in contract to buy the 1.7-million-square-foot Daily News headquarters at 450 West 33rd Street.

Last year, Broadway purchased 340 Madison from Harry and Billy Macklowe for $550 million. The firm also owns 522 Fifth Avenue and 660 Madison Avenue.

TWO SECRETIVE AND AMBITIOUS DEVELOPERS, Joseph Chetrit and Baruch Singer, have struck a deal in midtown south.

Mr. Singer has sold Mr. Chetrit a series of buildings along Sixth Avenue for $140 million. The sale was recorded in city records.

Mr. Chetrit’s new purchase is made up of an office building and abandoned apartment buildings that are all between 30th and 31st streets. The block will almost undoubtedly be used for future development.

The site is between 855 and 871 Avenue of the Americas, in an unremarkable plot. Both 859 and 861 Avenue of the Americas are four stories each, with windows that are either blacked out or boarded up. Those buildings’ retail tenants are typical of the area: an Army & Navy store, a juice bar, a discount shoe store, and vacated retail space on the corner of 31st Street.

The sale also includes an office building at 855 Sixth Avenue, which is six stories and 126,400 square feet. The average asking rent is below market, at $29 per square foot in six available spaces, according to CoStar.

But! Mr. Chetrit must have a plan. In total, the buildings that he purchased are less than 175,000 square feet, and Mr. Chetrit certainly didn’t drop more than $800 a foot for a small office building and a pair of 85-year-old apartment buildings.

Mr. Chetrit wouldn’t comment for this story, so it is unclear what the development rights are. But when he plans to put something up, he’ll have some company. Directly across 30th Street, at 835 Sixth Avenue, the J.D. Carlisle Development Corporation has already cleared a construction site.

The seller, Mr. Singer, is the notoriously furtive landlord who has controlled some of the city’s poorest tenements. His buildings have famously been the home of a high number of code violations and fines—not to mention the fact that he was also the owner of a Harlem building that partially collapsed in 1995, leading to three deaths.

Mr. Chetrit, who is marketing the Toy Building on Fifth Avenue, has clearly been giving attention to his future investments. As The Observer reported last week, the developer purchased a pair of downtown buildings near the World Trade Center redevelopment site with bigger plans undoubtedly in mind.

And it was also Mr. Chetrit who sold Broadway Partners the Daily News’ headquarters at 450 West 33rd Street.

THE MAJORITY STAKE OF THE Mandarin Oriental is now officially in the hands of Dubai-based Istithmar.

The company paid $278 million for its portion of the hotel, according to city records.

Istithmar, which is controlled by the sheikdom’s ruling family, owns 73 percent of the hotel, according to a spokeswoman at the Related Companies. Mandarin Oriental Inc. will retain 25 percent, and Apollo and Related Companies will retain 2 percent.

Meanwhile, Istithmar recently closed on its $300 million sale of the former Knickerbocker hotel. It also paid $285 million for the W Hotel in Union Square.

Analysts ticked off the usual litany of benchmarks showing downtown’s resurgence in the last five years: the low vacancy rates as compared to post–Sept. 11; the higher asking rents; the large leases, including the two biggest in Manhattan in 2006.

But, still, the money’s in midtown.

All of the most expensive recent Manhattan office leases have been in midtown, not in downtown (or anywhere else in the borough, for that matter). In 2006, according to the brokerage Cushman & Wakefield, companies and landlords signed 43 office leases where the rent was at least $100 a square foot—every last one in midtown.

So far in 2007, companies and landlords have inked a dozen $100-or-more-a-foot leases—again, all in midtown. This puts 2007 on a breakneck pace to smash last year’s record of 43.

Most of those 2006 leases were concentrated in certain areas within midtown itself, suggesting that the crème de la crème, as it were, is even picky at the submarket level. Forget Times Square—we want Madison Avenue!

Of the 12 this year, half were along Park Avenue in midtown, three were in the Rockefeller Center area on Sixth Avenue, and the remaining three were on Madison or Fifth avenues.

Of the 43 the year before, 23 were in Madison or Fifth Avenue addresses, and 13 on Park. The 11 leases in 2005 that had rents of at least $100 a foot were nearly all on Madison and Fifth in midtown, with one on Park. All such leases in 2003 and 2004—a whopping 14 total (to give you a sense of how successful the commercial market is now)—were in midtown.

All of the 21 Manhattan buildings that in 2006 commanded rents of at least $100 were in midtown.

The average rent in the submarket was $58.92 by the end of 2006, including sublease space. The best buildings in the most expensive midtown areas—Fifth, Madison and Park in the East 50’s and 40’s—averaged more than $86 a foot. The average rent in downtown now hovers around $38 a foot, according to Cushman & Wakefield, and only a very few buildings can command anywhere near the $100 that’s become a ho-hum benchmark in midtown.

This disparity in costs could, of course, ultimately benefit downtown. That’s the logic you’ll hear: Companies are supposed to see it as a bargain versus midtown, a last-stop-before-the-Holland-Tunnel way to avoid having to leave Manhattan. Maybe companies will plant back-office operations in New Jersey or in Brooklyn—but they can use downtown to keep a Manhattan address.

But will downtown landlords, those commanding the space at the sleeker top-tier towers, get to one day charge rents comparable to the bigger midtown players?

Look at the midtown towers, the better ones like 9 West 57th Street or the newer One Bryant Park, and see when those reach the topmost rents.

“Here’s the way to think of it: Typically, downtown rents are 35 and 40 percent cheaper than midtown rents, and that’s just based on about the last 15 years,” said Simon Wasserberger, a vice president at the brokerage CB Richard Ellis, which is handling the leasing at 7 World Trade Center for landlord Silverstein Properties. “If you want to guess when downtown is going to break $100, you have to think when the top floor at One Bryant Park leases for $160.”

The highest asking rent in 7 World Trade is now $75 a foot; and the 52-story, top-tier tower is more than half full of tenants barely a year after officially opening. It’s a top contender to lead downtown to the $100-a-foot benchmark provoking yawns in midtown, though it may be fully leased by the time that happens—and it is likely, despite midtown’s dominance now.

“That’s totally plausible,” Mr. Wasserberger said. “It’s just a matter of time.”

Pink has landed a ground-floor lease at 63 Wall Street for just under 4,000 square feet, a broker involved in the deal confirmed.

The high-end British retailer, which sells $200 dress shirts and $100 ties, already has stores at the Time Warner Center, 520 Madison Avenue and 1155 Avenue of the Americas.

The lease at 63 Wall Street is for 10 years, at a space with an asking rent of $200 per square foot. It should be ready for a summer opening.

Darrell Rubens of Winick Realty Group, who brokered the deal, said Pink was only one of many elite midtown retailers who were fighting over this address.

“We had just about every major Fifth Avenue tenant looking at it,” said Mr. Rubens.

Indeed, since Tiffany & Co. and Hermès announced downtown leases last year, tenants and brokers alike have been fleeing to Wall Street to find any and all open space.

Angellina DeRichie also worked on the deal for Winick.

This deal caps a dizzying few weeks of trading downtown for Mr. Rubens and Ms. DeRichie. Those two, along with other brokers at Winick Realty, just completed deals with the men’s clothing store Canali at 25 Broad Street and with John Catsimatidis’ Gristedes at 90 Maiden Lane.

THE MEGA-DEVELOPER SL GREEN CAN NOW BUILD a 900,000-square-foot tower at the foot of Grand Central Terminal.

This comes after SL Green purchased two small buildings, one at 331 Madison Avenue and the other at 48 East 43rd Street, for $76 million. SL Green owns a neighboring building on the block, at 317 Madison Avenue.

The Cushman & Wakefield investment-sales dream team, Richard Baxter, Scott Latham, Ron Cohen and Jon Caplan, brokered the deal.

Isaac Zion, a managing director at SL Green, also worked on the deal. He said SL Green will push rents and attract better tenants for the new buildings.

Mr. Zion said SL Green is seriously considering the possibility of building one big tower at one of the most lucrative addresses in the city.

“Given its location,” he told The Observer, “I think it plays out well as an office building to take in a different direction.”

If SL Green decides to build the tower, it would be between 42nd and 43rd streets, on Madison Avenue and a part of Vanderbilt Avenue.

As the properties now stand, 331 Madison Avenue is a 14-story, 92,000-square-foot building, and 48 East 43rd Street is a seven-story, 22,850-square-foot loft building.

The two buildings were sold by U.S. Trust on behalf of a group of investors, a source close to the deal said.

THE DEVELOPER JOSEPH CHETRIT HAS PURCHASED for $64 million a pair of New York University buildings that are within a stone’s throw of the World Trade Center redevelopment site.

The buildings, at 90 and 100 Trinity Place, are the former home of N.Y.U.’s Stern School of Business and the current home of two city high schools. The sale was recorded in city records.

The deal looks like a long-term investment for Mr. Chetrit. When N.Y.U. put the buildings on the block, it did so with the condition that the new owner extend and honor the lease of the two city schools, a spokeswoman for the university said.

The two schools, the High School of Economics and Finance and the High School for Leadership and Public Service, signed a 15-year lease in January, a spokeswoman for the city’s Department of Education said.

Mr. Chetrit would not comment for this story, but he’s likely banking on the potential value of an asset that will soon be among a sea of new glass buildings dotting the lower Manhattan skyline. Even if he doesn’t have leasing control until 2022, he’s taking the gamble.

The buy is also a sudden reversal for Mr. Chetrit, who has been recently selling and marketing part of his portfolio. As The Observer earlier reported, he sold the Daily News building at 450 West 33rd Street to Broadway Partners, and has assigned Eastdil’s Doug Harmon to market the Toy Building on Fifth Avenue.

MEANWHILE, BACK IN THE TREE-LINED CORNERS of the Upper West Side, an irreverent shoe company that created a niche online is moving to 269 Columbus Avenue.

The company, Crocs, is the maker of the colorful, plastic-looking clogs that have spurred a cult of loyal fans (Mario Batali seems to wear them all over the city) and a legion of grumpy dissidents (type “Crocs” into Google and you’ll find sites like “ihatecrocs.com”).

Now, everyone can gush or spew at the corner of 72nd and Columbus. The lease is for 10 years at 1,200 square feet.

Asking rent at the Columbus Avenue address is $300 per square foot. Rafe Evans, a broker at Walker Malloy & Co, represented the landlord, and said demand was so high for the Upper West Side address that Crocs will wind up paying even more than the asking rent.

The space used to belong to the restaurant City Grill.

These are boom times for the Colorado-based Crocs—last year it had revenues of more than $300 million, and it has a market cap that exceeds $1 billion. Crocs has sold its shoes mostly through the Internet and shoe vendors.

Crocs signed a lease last year at 143 Spring Street, but that location has yet to open. A spokeswoman for Crocs said the store on Columbus Avenue could open first.

Stephanie Snyder, of Robert K. Futterman & Associates, represented Crocs in the deal.

TIERNEY: It’s the process that we go through on any major proposed change in the historic district, whether it be a proposed change in the form of a new building or an alteration to an older building or whatever. This happened to have obviously a prominent architect [Lord Norman Foster], and to be large in scope. It attracted a lot of attention because of all those issues. We have those kinds of issues all the time.

So it was put through the normal process—which is to say, you propose a change to the historic district, to a building, then you come to the landmarks commission and say, “Is it appropriate? Is it not? Here’s what we’re thinking; what do you guys think?” And then it goes through our process, and that’s what happened here.

It was done exactly the same way that we do everything else.

What’s going to happen to 980 Madison?

The bottom line among the commissioners was that this particular application was, as presented, inappropriate for this site, for this historic district [the Upper East Side Historic District].

So are Mr. Rosen and Mr. Foster going to come back with a different design?

I don’t know; you have to ask them. They certainly have the opportunity to do that, the right to do that. And then the process that I just described to you—public hearing, public community board, public opportunity to be heard—this will all come into play.

Mr. Rosen didn’t seem too upset by the commissioners’ comments, some of which were very critical of his plans.

It wasn’t personal. These are comments on the nature of the building, the architecture, and I think we strive to be, as always—and I think we succeed—very civil and very precise and limited to the nature of the application before us.

How do you decide, as chairman, which potential landmarks go before public hearings?

The general rule is, the more complex and complicated the changes proposed, the more likely it is to go to a public hearing. The more legal answer is that if a change is covered by the rules and regulations of the commission, and it meets those rules on its face, then the change can be approved by our staff and it doesn’t need to go to a public hearing.

But when you start doing something that varies from that—that is more significant, if you will—then it usually passes over into the realm of going before the full commission. Once that happens, it entails a public hearing and a public process.

A lot of different people have a lot of different opinions on the landmarks commission: It’s unresponsive, it’s a pawn of politicians and developers (an accusation that Tom Wolfe, using 980 Madison as an example, made in The New York Times last year), it’s stuffy. What do you think is the biggest misperception about the commission and its landmarking process?

I don’t know whether there is a misperception about the commission and the process. Most people that I come into contact with are generally aware of how it works, and are aware that it entails participation by the community boards.

There just seems to be some harsh criticism—Mr. Wolfe especially, with his assertion that the commission doesn’t do enough to curb development in favor of preservation. Why would that perception be out there?

I don’t know, because the record totally belies that—not only the record on this one case [980 Madison], but I believe we conduct business that way all the time.

And the record is, I think, very clear on the activity of this commission. We’ve been very active in terms of, first of all, being a rigorous protector of historic preservation, but also of being open to appropriate changes, even if they are contemporary or, as some in that [980 Madison] hearing said, “radical.”

Can you describe how closely the commission now works with the current City Council?

We work very closely and very well with the Council. I have an excellent professional and personal relationship with all the Council members that I have come into contact with having to do with this job. And that starts with the Speaker, Christine Quinn, and with Jessica Lappin, who is a superb chair of the landmarks subcommittee. Melinda Katz, the chair of the land-use committee—she is a superb chair.

And how about the Mayor? You were appointed by Bloomberg.

We obviously keep City Hall aware of what we are doing. He is committed to preservation. He is committed to great architecture and design, not only here but in other realms of city government. That is an overall approach that he has, and that Patty Harris, as the first deputy mayor, has—to good architecture, good design, preservation. And, therefore, we have the support and the independence to do our job.

Here are the official price tags on three other buildings they bought:

1540 Broadway: $967,555,811
527 Madison: $234,641,309
Tower 56: $178,521,008

The Real Estate is still waiting on the records for the other four buildings the Macklowes bought last week from Blackstone; 1301 Avenue of the Americas should come close to breaking more records.

- John Koblin

The Real Estate called the principal actors for comment, having been unable to attend in person.

"Nine out of 10 commissioners strongly opposed the current project because of the height, the scale, and the materials were inapporpiate for the district," said commission spokeswoman Lisi de Bourbon. "They felt the building did not relate well with the Parke-Bernet building."

One commissioner, the Rev. Thomas Pike, even called it a "bad marriage."

But the developer, Aby Rosen, was ready for a lot worse.

"From our perspective, it went quite well," said Rosen's spokeswoman. "Nobody was closing the door and saying, 'Absolutely not. You can't build something on top of the Parke-Bernet building.'"

At least the commission did not take a vote, permitting the Foster-Rosen team to come back in a few months with a revised plan.

- Matthew Schuerman

Cushman & Wakefield's Matthew Astrachan, Mitchell Konsker and Steven Bauer represented the tenant.

Release after the jump.

- John Koblin

PHILLIPS-VAN HEUSEN LEASES 200,000 SF AT 200 MADISON

Cushman & Wakefield represents growing apparel company in corporate HQ lease

NEW YORK - Jan. 5, 2007 - Cushman & Wakefield announced today that Phillips-Van Heusen Corporation, one of the largest apparel companies in the world, has signed a 200,000-square-foot renewal and expansion at 200 Madison Ave. for its corporate headquarters.

Phillips-Van Heusen signed a long-term lease for 10 full floors at 200 Madison Ave., located between 35th and 36th Streets. It will renew the 150,000-square-feet it currently occupies on the 10th through 18th floors, and the 23rd floor. The firm will also expand by 47,629 square feet, taking the entire eighth floor.

Cushman & Wakefield's Matthew Astrachan, Mitchell Konsker and Steven Bauer of the firm's Midtown Manhattan office represented Phillips-Van Heusen in its site evaluation and in lease negotiations with the landlord, 200 Madison Associates, a partnership of George Comfort & Sons, Inc. and Loeb Partners Realty. The same Cushman & Wakefield team recently represented Phillips-Van Heusen in a 225,000-square-foot lease renewal and expansion in Bridgewater, N.J.

"This new lease allows Phillips-Van Heusen to accommodate its continuing growth while maintaining its operations within one office building," said Mr. Astrachan, a Cushman & Wakefield executive vice president.

"Phillips-Van Heusen evaluated its options for additional space, but ultimately found 200 Madison was the best alternative for it to expand its corporate headquarters operation," said Mr. Konsker, an executive vice president at Cushman & Wakefield.

In October, Phillips-Van Heusen agreed to acquire tie maker Superba for $180 million.

Phillips-Van Heusen was founded in 1876 and is headquartered in Manhattan. The company owns and markets the Calvin Klein brand worldwide. It is the world's largest shirt company and markets a variety of goods under its own brands, Van Heusen, Calvin Klein, IZOD, Arrow, Bass and G.H. Bass & Co., and its licensed brands Geoffrey Beene, Kenneth Cole New York, Kenneth Cole Reaction, unlisted, A Kenneth Cole Production, BCBG Max Azria, BCBG Attitude, MICHAEL Michael Kors, Sean John, Chaps, Donald J. Trump Signature Collection and JOE Joseph Abboud.

Totaling about 600,000 square feet, 200 Madison Ave. is a 26-story office building located in Murray Hill. In addition to Phillips-Van Heusen, major tenants include Greater NY Mutual Insurance and Lally McFarland & Pantello.

The owners were represented by Peter S. Duncan and Matt Coudert of George Comfort & Sons, Inc.

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In a conversation on Tuesday with The Real Estate, the developer Aby Rosen did his best to besmirch the knight in a white suit who tried to rescue 980 Madison in the Times this weekend:

Rosen, whom Wolfe described standing outside last month's commission hearing with his "chin up, tummy out," went on to extol all the great parts of 980 Madison Avenue that Charlotte Simmons' alter ego overlooked: the museum, sculpture garden, green technology and a very nice building to boot.

"I am a respected developer. I would do things right."

- Matthew Schuerman