The law firm Ropes & Gray has completed a deal to sublease one of its floors at 1211 Avenue of the Americas, the large midtown office tower where it has its New York headquarters.
Ropes & Gray is subleasing the building’s 41,500-square-foot 32nd floor to the law firm Grais & Ellsworth for seven years. Asking rent for the space was in the $50s per square foot. Read More
Jamestown Properties and Rockwood Capital, along with Crown Acquisitions and Murray Hill Properties, finalized their deal to purchase 530 Fifth Avenue for a reported $390 million, officials said.
The property, which was previously owned by Joseph Moinian and the Chetrit Group, will receive a $20 million renovation to upgrade the building. Read More
Speeches were casually ignored, drinks were spilled and bonds were formed at last Thursday’s 116th annual Real Estate Board of New York Gala, which this year drew an estimated 2,000 brokers, owners, advertising buyers and real estate reporters to the New York Hilton for an evening of conviviality, honorifics and hushed deal making. Among the fray was Commercial Observer staff writer Daniel Geiger, who during the course of the evening saw his stenopad tossed by an irate real estate broker and who unabashedly accosted Studley’s Woody Heller in the hotel’s bathroom, all for the sake of the story. Below, a timeline of gala comings and goings, from the innocuous gossip down to the downright obnoxious. Read More
In a scene reminiscent of the Oscars, Newmark Knight Frank’s Executive Managing Director Lance Korman learned he had won the national brokerage firm’s “Top Producing Broker of the Year” accolade on the very night of the awards ceremony. Read More
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
When in 2006 the real estate investor Joseph Moinian bought the office building 475 Fifth Avenue in partnership with the firm Westbrook Partners, the Eurasia Group—a tenant in the building—saw it as an opportunity. The company had years left on its lease, but word quickly spread among tenants that Mr. Moinian was going to offer handsome buyouts to empty the building so he could gut renovate the skyscraper and re-lease it at sky-high rents.
Mr. Moinian’s strategy hardly seemed audacious at the time. The economy was hot, Manhattan rents were rising by the month and prime office space was in strong demand. Read More
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
Pace University has reached an agreement to move into 140 William Street, taking the entire 50,000 square foot building for its dance and visual arts programs, The Commercial Observer has learned.
The school will be relocating from its current space at 280 Broadway, said David Falk, president of Newmark Knight Frank who represented Pace in the deal. Read More
French luxury home goods maker Daum Inc. and its sister dinnerware company Haviland will officially move out of its longtime Madison Avenue storefront to 4,500 square feet of office and retail space at 499 Park Avenue, where the business had been recently operating a temporary store for the holiday season. Read More
inVentiv Health, a multifaceted provider of services in the health care industry, has signed a 75,000-square-foot renewal and expansion for its subsidiary Chandler Chicco Agency at 450 West 15th Street.
The company, which handles public relations and advertising for health care companies, renewed its lease for the 300,000-square-foot building’s entire seventh floor and a portion of six. The firm will expand onto part of the building’s fourth floor, taking a little over 21,000 square feet. Read More
