Cadian Capital Management, a New York hedge fund, has signed a 10-year lease for the entire 36th floor at 535 Madison Avenue, brokers told The Commercial Observer. The 11,930-square-foot transaction earlier this month will allow the growing hedge fund to relocate from 461 Fifth Avenue. Read More
Ithaka, a nonprofit in new technologies in the academic field, has signed a large 25,462-square-foot lease at 2 Rector Street in Lower Manhattan, The Commercial Observer has learned. The value of the transaction, which will allow the non-profit to relocate from its current digs in midtown, commanded approximately $37 per square foot, brokers said. Read More
Japanese bank Nomura’s decision to move out of the World Financial Center downtown and take 900,000 square feet at Worldwide Plaza in midtown is undoubtedly a blow for the tip of the island’s commercial future. The move will leave a huge vacancy at the Brookfield Properties-owned complex just as 3 million square feet of leases there are ending in 2013. (We saw the move coming in mid-May.)
But it’s more than just the vacancy. Read More
Macy’s, the 150-year-old retail behemoth perhaps known best for its annual Thanksgiving Day parade, has inked a 10,000-square-foot expansion deal at its longtime corporate office on Broadway, brokers said. Read More
The Center for Family Representation—a nonprofit legal services and policy firm for poor families—has inked a 13,400-square-foot transaction in Lower Manhattan, brokers said. The nonprofit, which previously operated at 116 John Street, signed a 10-year lease at 40 Worth Street, the 84-year-old home to Gap Inc. and other office tenants.
Denham Wolf Real Estate Services, Read More
It was July 1, 1982. Approximately 4,000 followers of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon were entering and exiting the second-floor Grand Ballroom of the New Yorker Hotel at 34th Street and Eighth Avenue. There they entered into marriage contracts with strangers whom the reverend, the Korean-born founder and head of the Unification Church, had picked for them. Then, the same day, they walked barely a block and entered Madison Square Garden—most in formal wear—where they were declared husband and wife en masse by Reverend Moon.
Photos of the Moonie marriage ceremony were distributed worldwide. It would be hard to forget—though the New Yorker Hotel would prefer that you did.
The venerable old hotel, once the largest inn on earth, with 2,500 rooms and 1 million square feet over 43 floors and the likes of Joe DiMaggio and Benny Goodman swinging by, has tried mightily to shake off the Moonies’ shadow ever since the church, which reveres the reverend as the Messiah and the Second Coming of Christ, bought it in the bad, old Beame days of 1976, and started using it exclusively for church housing (the Moonies still own it, through their Holy Spirit Association).
The latest gambit: marketing the largest contiguous block of Class B space in New York City, 287,000 square feet over five floors now occupied by egg-salad tenants like insurance firms and the Barbizon Modeling School. Read More
As president of Winoker Realty, David Winoker has greatly expanded the firm from its relatively modest roots under his father’s leadership. Its presence is most conspicuous in the Garment Center, where a majority of the firm’s 32 properties reside. Mr. Winoker, 48, spoke with to The Observer earlier this month about that neighborhood’s present and what he has in mind for its future.
The Observer: Winoker has a large portfolio of assets in the Garment Center. Where is the neighborhood heading and where is it at now, tenant-wise?
Mr. Winoker: It’s changed over the years and you have more office tenants continually signing leases in this neighborhood. It still has excellent transportation and subway access, and a lot of the buildings have undergone major renovations and redevelopment. So it’s not purely garment anymore.
Clearly, we still have buildings that will house showrooms and dress companies. They’re here and they’ll be here for a long time. But the world has changed, and it’s been changing for years. Read More
When real estate executive David Sigman first walked into 25 Broad Street, about a year after Lehman collapsed, it was a funhouse of pre-2008 distractions: the lobby unfolded with yards of purple carpeting ringed by red circles into a would-be night club with dozens of crystal chandeliers and a mauve-color spa/yoga room. Most striking of all were the matching royal portraits of developer Kent Swig and his soon-to-be ex-wife, Liz Macklowe.
The Observer recently reported that the first 10 apartment tenants had signed at 25 Broad, bringing the failed condo conversion back to life as a rental—and Lehman Brothers, twitching, back with it.
Not even three years after the bank’s collapse took the economy with it, Lehman, through its holding company, lives on, a rosy zombie quietly looking to make a small fortune off prime New York properties, and maybe—just maybe—pay off some creditors. Read More
A benevolent Bronx nonprofit will open its first Manhattan outpost at Park Avenue and 27th Street.
HELP/PSI, which helps young people find medical care and counseling services at its Bronx-based nursing home, has leased 8,800 square feet for more than 10 years in 373 Park Avenue South.
The asking rent in the building is around Read More
Unlike the liberal elite of the mainstream media who are moving their publications en masse to Lower Manhattan—think Conde Nast and the Daily News, for examples—New York Post columnist and Commentary Magazine editor John Podhoretz is standing athwart the trend and yelling stop (yes, we know, wrong conservative magazine, but same sentiment) by moving his pub Read More
