Matt Leon, a young and upcoming executive at the real estate services firm Newmark Knight Frank, will be taking over as head of the leasing team that represents TF Cornerstone’s collection of properties, which includes the midtown trophy building Carnegie Hall Tower, 645 Madison Avenue and 387 Park Avenue South.

Newmark's Matt Leon.

The substantial account had previously belonged to Billy Cohen, a top Newmark executive who had long worked with the firm, helping it fill Carnegie Hall Tower when that property was developed in the early 1990s as well as craft its image and place among Manhattan’s top high end office properties.

Mr. Leon had previously worked as an assistant to Mr. Cohen on the account. A person familiar with the situation said that Mr. Cohen was stepping down because of growing responsibilities tied to other agency assignments he handles, specifically buildings that he is working on with another large landlord; Malkin Properties. Mr. Cohen is a lead broker on a Newmark team that handles deals at the Empire State Building as well other Malkin assets.

The Empire State Building has attracted a number substantial leases recently that he has had a hand in arranging, including a 70,000 square foot lease with Human Rights Watch in recent weeks. Last year, he helped ink a deal for the Asian firm Li & Fung to take 500,000 square feet in the landmark tower.

Even though Mr. Cohen’s departure is amicable it still is a notable changing of the guard.

Mr. Cohen is one of Newmark’s top dealmakers and is considered a veteran of the real estate brokerage business. In recent years,though, it was Mr. Leon who had drawn much of the praise for his savvy minding of TF Cornerstone’s space. Before coming to Newmark, Mr. Leon had been a real estate attorney at what is widely considered the top practice in the city, Fried Frank.

“With his background in law, he can just cut right through deals,” a source said of Mr. Leon.

Neither Mr. Leon nor Mr. Cohen could be reached for comment by press time. TF Cornerstone also could not be reached.

Dan Geiger, Staff Writer, is reachable at Dgeiger@Observer.com

--UPDATED, 1:46 p.m.--

Even more temporary office space to come. (Courtesy Property Shark)

The firm will be relocating from 11 Penn Plaza, where the retailing giant Macy’s is expanding into the space it will leave behind.

Regus will take floors 17-18 at 112 West 34th Street, a 26-story, 770,000-square-foot asset owned by Malkin Properties. The firm has committed to the spaces--at 28,000 and 23,000 square feet respectively--for 15 years. Rents start in the mid $40s per square foot.

A spokesman for Regus confirmed the deal and said that 112 West 34th Street was an ideal location because it was nearby its offices at 11 Penn Plaza, making the move more convenient for its tenants while remaining close to Penn Station, a central transit hub.

“We want to retain as many tenants as possible in the move and stay close to Penn,” the spokesman said. “The 11 Penn location is almost fully leased.”

Regus rents offices and then partitions the space for smaller users such as start up companies or even individuals who would like to lease a single work station.

“Many of our tenants are firms that are starting out and want flexibility,” the spokesman said. “It’s a great way to enter the market because we allow tenants to easily shrink or add space.”

Lately the concept has appeared to gain steam in the city amid lingering economic problems that have cast swaths of the workforce into the job market and spurred some to start their own business or embark on a more entrepreneurial career path.

As The Commercial Observer reported yesterday, WeWork, another office suite provider, just committed to about 75,000 square feet at 175 Varick Street where it will open its fourth location in the city. According to WeWork’s chief executive, Adam Neuman, the firm has taken almost 200,000 square feet in under two years.

Regus is one of the largest office suite companies with 20 locations in the city and over 1,200 in 92 countries worldwide. The company has opened a number of offices this year in Manhattan, at 99 Hudson Street, 41 Madison Avenue, 600 Third Avenue, 77 Water Street and 477 Madison Avenue its spokesman said and looking for more space in which to expand next year.

Mitch Arkin, an executive at the brokerage firm Cushman & Wakefield, leades a C&W agency team that represents Malkin Properties at 112 West 34th Street. Mr. Arkin could not be reached for comment. Regus is represented by a CBRE team headed by broker Mark Ravesloot. Mr. Ravesloot also could not be reached.

Macy’s will take up the the roughly 60,000 square feet that Regus will be leaving behind at 11 Penn Plaza. In that deal, Macy’s will lease the roughly 1.1 million square foot building’s fifth floor, expanding its already huge presence in the property to about 600,000 square feet sources say. Macy’s will pay rents in the $50s per square foot for the space, which it will take through 2020 to match the existing term of a portion of its lease in the building. 11 Penn Plaza is owned by the real estate investment trust Vqornado and represented by one of Vornado’s in house leasing executive Glen Weiss. Mr. Weiss couldn’t be reached for comment.

Dan Geiger, Staff Writer, is reachable at DGeiger@Observer.com

The point of the poll was to show that indeed this building has an iconic place in Americans' vision of New York, and that changing the skyline would be bad for the city. Sixty-six percent of New York City visitors, according to the poll's sponsors, feel the tower "would degrade the character of the New York City skyline."

Of course, this was just the latest round in the ongoing—and rapidly culminating—spat between Empire State Building owners Tony and Peter Malkin and Vornado Realty Trust, the developers planning a 1,200-foot tower two blocks away.

The poll—and the Malkins' rhetoric in the fight—taps into a larger question on land-use policy, one that can also be seen to a certain extent three miles south, in the hysterical fight (if people yelling about an as-of-right building can really be termed a fight) over the mosque planned two blocks from ground zero: What role should those outside New York play in development decisions?

Tony Malkin, who is leading the charge against the Vornado tower, is scrambling to protect the postcard vision of New York City's skyline, where the Empire State Building sits front and center. And while he is appealing to New Yorkers to rally behind him, it is the international view of the New York skyline that he is trying to protect.

Here's a sampling of his rhetoric from a fact sheet he sent out earlier this week:

"The Empire State Building is the internationally recognized icon on the skyline of New York City.  We are its custodians, and must protect its place.  Would a tower be allowed next to The Eiffel Tower or Big Ben's clock tower?"

Translation: If the rest of the world had a vote, it would probably vote against this tower.

This is a rare appeal in the world of New York land use, where approvals are structured around a system of very local politics: what does the immediate community and the local Council member think about a project? And on this level, other considerations matter, such as the economic effects on the city (it's a big investment); what a new tower might do to the neighborhood (make it less gritty, presumably); and what it might do to employment (people have to build the Vornado tower, after all).

In the end, things seem to be swinging toward approval. Council Speaker Christine Quinn and other members of the Council have voiced few concerns about the height, and at a hearing yesterday, many of the questions from key Council members—Leroy Comrie, for one—suggested they were not yet swayed by Mr. Malkin.

Still, Mr. Malkin was nothing if not tenacious, and yesterday at the City Council, he did not hold back any contempt about the tower's design.

Sitting in a cramped committee room at 250 Broadway, he looked up at the Council members on the zoning subcommittee and gave testimony and answered follow-up questions with a long list of complaints about the tower.

David Greenbaum, the wiry president of Vornado's New York office division, who is leading the charge for the tower, was sitting just 10 feet away listening to every criticism.

Within a stream of other vituperation, Mr. Malkin called the tower a "1,200-foot high, brand-new monstrosity."

At that point, Mr. Greenbaum turned to his left where his architect, Rafael Pelli, was sitting. He smiled, and let out a little laugh, and went back to listening. 

ebrown@observer.com

Over at the Municipal Art Society's Web site, there's an online poll.

Now one day in, things are running pretty even. With 874 votes in, 49 percent of those who clicked on the polls say the Vornado tower should be built as planned, and 51 percent say it shouldn't.

(The background is that Empire State Building owner Tony Malkin is leading a push against the tower in the name of defending the postcard view of Manhattan's skyline. "We are merely custodians of this building's place on the Manhattan skyline," he said earlier this week.)

On Monday, things may heat up a bit more: There's a hearing scheduled for 9:30 at the City Council, where anyone who wants to can show up and offer their two cents. 

ebrown@observer.com

This past spring, Anthony Malkin, president of Malkin Properties and an owner of the Empire State Building, started paying attention to an office tower planned by Vornado Realty Trust. The giant office landlord was seeking approvals to build a tower up to 1,216 feet high two blocks to his building's west, on what's now the site of the Hotel Pennsylvania, at 33rd Street and Seventh Avenue.

The tower's height, to Mr. Malkin, was worrisome, so he researched the issue and fired off a letter to the City Planning Commission, raising concerns about the effect it would have on views of the landmarked Empire State Building. The letter had no impact: The commission voted to approve Vornado's tower without major changes.

Now, with the skyscraper poised to clear a final hurdle before a key City Council committee next week, Mr. Malkin is rushing to round up critics of the tower—and supporters of the Empire State Building's unique place in the skyline—in an attempt to urge the Council or Vornado to scale back.

And while many civic groups and elected officials have generally been supportive of the new tower so far, Mr. Malkin has caught at least a bit of traction: On Tuesday, the New York Landmarks Conservancy decided to speak out about the tower on account of the effect on the Empire State Building; and other civic groups are considering similar actions.

"What this does to New York City, we think, is wrong," Mr. Malkin told The Observer Tuesday. "It just boggles the mind that people would allow this to be done to the skyline of New York City. Is this our persona: cold; impersonal?"

FOR EIGHT DECADES, the Empire State Building has dominated the public's perception of New York City's skyline. Not only is the Art Deco tower the city's tallest, but its aesthetic supremacy is compounded by its location: At 34th Street, it is south of the skyscraper fray of central midtown, making it a tree amid the plains of midtown south.

Two blocks west and one block south, Vornado—an office space titan headed by its forceful, Bronx-raised chairman, Steve Roth—has its own vision for the skyline, and it's somewhat different. For more than a decade, Mr. Roth has been scooping up property after property around Penn Station, guided by the hope that when New York grows and needs new sites for office towers, they will blossom around the country's largest rail hub.

Chief in this vision is a would-be office tower to rise in place of the cramped and dingy Hotel Pennsylvania—a Pelli Clarke Pelli-designed skyscraper that would, as currently envisioned, rise from a boxy base like a slightly tapering glass obelisk, soaring to 1,216 feet (or 1,190 feet, under a second design). Given that this would put it just 34 feet shy of the Empire State Building's peak (the antenna is not counted in the height), the tower, named 15 Penn Plaza, would be a formidable visual rival from afar and on postcards.

Hence Mr. Malkin's apprehension.

Mr. Malkin, the scion of a four-generation real estate empire, is not one to bite his tongue. He got into a public spat with City Council Speaker Christine Quinn in June when he refused to honor Mother Teresa by lighting the Empire State Building for what would be her 100th birthday. Earlier this week, The Wall Street Journal quoted him as calling green-design standards "bullshit" for being too lax. And, in 2007, with landlord Douglas Durst, he took out newspaper ads that publicly criticized the state for building the Freedom Tower at the World Trade Center, a move akin to a campaign his grandfather Lawrence Wein led with Mr. Durst's father when the original twin towers were planned (those towers bested the Empire State Building as the city's tallest).

He first came to be involved with 15 Penn Plaza when Vornado began shepherding the plans for the tower through the city's seven-month-long public-approval process, which concludes with the vote by the City Council this month. The size of the tower caught him off-guard, he said. He began to round up consultants and push for changes, including at the City Planning Commission, given that such a building so close by would significantly change the skyline.

"We're not talking about preventing tall buildings in New York," Mr. Malkin said. "The question here is this tall building here in New York, being approximately 800, 900 feet away from the Empire State Building, crowding the distinctive skyline of the city."

He is no fan of the design—he likened it to "an undersea ICBM"—and sees a decision on the tower as a historic one, saying it is "akin to the loss of Penn Station."

As for what's driving Mr. Malkin, it seems to be a transparent self-interest. He views himself as a guardian of his building's place in the skyline, and, as such, he is protective of anything that might encroach on that. If there are financial motivations-and Mr. Malkin says there are not-they are not obvious (although he has raised concerns that the new skyscraper would interfere with his building's radio tower). The Vornado tower and the Empire State Building would compete for two different types of tenants; namely, those willing to pay high rents for modern space at the Vornado tower (banks and the like), and those who can't. Tenants at the Empire State Building include the FDIC and nonprofits like Human Rights Watch, for instance.

CAMPAIGNS AGAINST MAJOR towers are ingrained in the history of New York, of course, but rarely are they led—or even participated in—by major landlords. Typically, it is the local residents who put landlords on the defensive, often using many of the same tactics as Mr. Malkin (appealing to civic groups; faulting the environmental review; making renderings to illustrate a proposed building's effects). But unlike the typical Upper West Side renter concerned about a new condo tower across the street, he has a bit more of a platform on which to stand.

Further, Mr. Malkin's argument is not without precedent, at least if one is to look at the model set by the Bloomberg administration last year, when the City Planning Commission chopped 200 feet off the height of the 1,250-foot-tall, Jean Nouvel-designed tower next to MoMA. The reasoning, from the Planning Commission, was that the design for the tower's top was not shown to merit "being in the zone of the Empire State Building's iconic spire."

"It's hard to understand how City Planning could say that 15 Penn Plaza would have no impact on the Empire State Building when they already lowered a proposed 53rd Street building for that very reason," said Peg Breen, president of the New York Landmarks Conservancy, who added that her group does not oppose development on the Hotel Pennsylvania. "We would urge the Council to look at the discretionary waivers and bonuses this proposal has received."

The local community board has been critical of the Vornado plan, and opposed it on a number of grounds. And the powerful hotel workers' union has been concerned with the plans for the tower, given that it would involve shuttering the giant Hotel Pennsylvania.

Of course, this is all coming quite late in the process, so much so that it's hard to see how it would have much of an effect, especially when the tower has received support from some civic groups and the borough president. The clock is ticking, with the City Council vote scheduled for next week, and strong opposition mo
vements take time, particularly when heated opposition did not form sooner in the process.

And Mr. Malkin's earlier tiff with Ms. Quinn, the Council speaker, over Mother Teresa's birthday can't help, as the tower sits in her district.

That said, the proposed tower may, in the end, simply prove to be theoretical. Vornado is by no means ready to demolish the Hotel Pennsylvania, a property that, despite its less-than-rave reviews, was minting cash for the company when room rates were high in 2007 and 2008.

Further, Vornado has said it is only moving ahead with the rezoning now to have the option for building the tower at some later date, if and when it finds an anchor tenant. The firm declined to comment on Mr. Malkin's criticism.

ebrown@observer.com

Jason Black has found that going green can become a habit.

The director of architecture and sustainability for Reckson, a division of SL Green, said the firm began its green initiatives by recycling carpet and ceiling tiles in its suburban office portfolio, then graduated to lighting retrofits and to installing a solar roof on one of its office buildings in Greenwich, Conn. Finding savings in one area emboldened the firm to find "green savings" in other areas, and Mr. Black said Reckson's portfolio of suburban properties is being used as a proving ground for measures that could eventually be adopted in SL Green's New York City ones.

Other building owners may also get into the habit. Whereas such development could sometimes mean waiting 10 to even 15 years for a noticeable payoff, a confluence of factors, ranging from improved and cheaper green building products, greater knowledge on how to make these projects pay and, ironically, the slowdown in New York City construction, has meant that more green new buildings and retrofit projects can pay dividends in a three-to-five-year horizon.

"A lot of significant measures don't have a 10- or a 15-year payback period," said Katie Rothenberg, manager of commercial real estate for the U.S. Green Building Council. "The more you know, the more feasible it becomes."

Some green building initiatives can be implemented for minimal cost and produce an almost immediate payback, according to Robert Bolin, senior vice president at Syska Hennessy Group. For example, a building can introduce a "smart lighting" system-which encompasses daylight-responsive and occupancy-sensor lighting-that can save on energy because less lighting is used and the air-conditioning loads drop, because rooms are cooler when lights are off, he said.

"This is a simple double whammy," Mr. Bolin said. "This is low-hanging fruit that provides an almost immediate payback."

A LIGHTING RETROFIT at 21 Reckson properties, completed in May 2009, in Westchester and Fairfield counties replaced older, three-lamp lighting fixtures with two-lamp fixtures that emitted 40 percent more light, thus enabling Reckson to reduce the amount of fixtures needed. The project cost $1.4 million to do, but means an energy savings of $500,000 a year, or about a 1.4-year payback, when incentives from the New York State Energy Research and Development Authority (NYSERDA) and Connecticut Light and Power are figured into the equation, Mr. Black said.

Building owners can also receive fairly fast and generous returns if they commission their building, which involves a run-through of all of a building's mechanical systems to see if they are operating at peak energy efficiency, Ms. Rothenberg said.

A 2004 study conducted by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, Portland Energy Conservation, Inc. and the Energy Systems Laboratory found that for existing buildings, commissioning costs were 27 cents per square foot, with the end result an energy savings of 15 percent, translating to a payback in seven months. "You're talking about getting a payback for this in under a year," Ms. Rothenberg said. "That's a no-brainer."

Reckson's payback on its solar roof will take longer. The solar roof on the Greenwich building, completed earlier this year, will provide approximately 5 percent of the building's annual energy needs, and counting state and federal incentives, including some from the Connecticut Clean Energy Fund, the payback will occur in a 4.5-to-5-year time frame. The panels will allow the building to reduce its peak load energy demand because of its on-site energy-generation capacity, Mr. Black said, and he believes that there will be opportunities to use solar power at some of SL Green's New York City buildings.

"We're definitely looking at opportunities down the road," he said.

However, Mr. Bolin of Syska Hennessy says that some highly visible green energy markers, such as solar panels and wind turbines, typically have long payback periods that can range from 10 to 15 years. He points out that the Empire State Building will have a much shorter payback period with its headline-making retrofit. The iconic building, which will reduce its energy usage by 38 percent when the retrofit is completed, will contain neither solar panels nor wind turbines.

The total incremental cost for the sustainable retrofit of the Empire State Building, which began this year, is projected to be $13.2 million. At the retrofit's conclusion, in 2013, the building will qualify for LEED Existing Building Gold, with an Energy Star rating of 90, putting it in the top 10 percent of buildings in the U.S.

With annual energy savings of $4.4 million per year, the payback period is three years, with 55 percent of the energy savings to be harvested by the end of 2010. Rather than one silver bullet, a multifaceted energy-savings approach is being used, which ranges from retrofitting the chiller plant to upgrading all of the building's windows to improve the thermal resistance of the glass, which will cut the solar heat gain by more than half. Getting tenants on board is also crucial to the blueprint, said Fred Posniak, senior vice president of W&H Properties, the building's owner. A larger number of tenants in the building will be submetered and will have access to online energy and benchmarking information.

SOMETIMES, HOWEVER, THE payback equation is not always as clear cut. The decision to go for LEED Gold on the $50 million rehab at 545 Madison Avenue, at 55th and Madison, was in part launched to make a statement of the building's quality, said David Sigman, senior vice president of LCOR, the building's owner.

The building, built in 1955, was retrofitted to be more energy efficient as part of a total rehab, Mr. Sigman said. Completed in the fall of 2008, it gained some LEED points for its urban location and proximity to mass transit.

Mr. Sigman said, however, that it is still too early to determine the building's total energy efficiency, since it is only 25 percent occupied. But there is value in going for Gold, he said.

"It's in a prime location and it's a prime renovation," Mr. Sigman said. "We wanted to have an outside imprimatur of quality."

LCOR's experience is not that unusual, according to Christopher Mills, senior vice president at Plaza Construction. New York City's building codes are so strict that LEED certification is largely attainable, he said. "If you're building a new, high-end condominium, achieving LEED Silver is not a stretch," Mr. Mills said.

Costs for LEED have also come more in line in part due to the near halt in new construction projects in the city. "Five years ago, subcontractors could pick and choose the projects they worked on, and there was a 'fear factor,' as some subcontractors weren't that familiar with [green building] techniques," he said.

But, with the dearth of construction projects today, subcontractors will now fight over these jobs, Mr. Mills said.

Also, government and utility company incentives have also made going green more cost-effective. NYSERDA incentives helped pay consultant fees on the 545 Madison project, and Mr. Black of Reckson argues that because of the credit crunch, these government incentives can make a huge difference.

Green building consultant Mychele Lord, principal of Lord Green Real Estate Strategies, argues that today's cost structure makes this an opportune time for building owners to institute energy-saving retrofits.

"You can do it slow and expensive, or you can do it fast and cheap," Ms. Lord said. She argues, though, that any retrofit's end result should be LEED certification or Energy Star rating attainment. "The real value is in the exit strategy," she said. "You say you own a green building, but what does that mean? You want to have the third-party certification. You own a LEED building-well, there aren't that many of those around."

GREEN BUILDING EXPENSES could fall further if these projects are undertaken "more holistically," Mr. Mills of Plaza Construction said. He notes that some office buildings are required to keep a tank of water on premises in case of fire; one facet of green building is storm-water retention. Mr. Mills wonders if, in some cases, these could be combined.

A key part of the cost equation is whether green buildings will attract tenants who will pay a premium to rent office space there. Billy Cohen, executive vice president and principal of Newmark Knight Frank, the leasing agent for the Empire State Building, said he believes the building will attract corporations with a major focus on sustainability.

If a corporation has sustainability as an important part of its marketing message, it may "pay a little extra" for the space, Mr. Bolin of Syska Hennessy said.

But Reckson's Jason Black believes that, ultimately, tenant buy-in should not be the deciding factor in whether to go green. "We believe this is the right thing to do," he said.

editorial@observer.com