Newmark Knight Frank

515 Madison Avenue Pursues LEED-EB, Inks Trio of Tenants

Wed

Jun

Thanks, perhaps, to a $5 million facelift and LEED-EBOM application, 515 Madison Avenue (at East 53rd Street) has been a recent bright spot in an otherwise unspectacular Manhattan commercial real estate market thus far in 2009. Recently, three deals were finalized at the 42-story tower: (1) a 22,300-square-foot, 15-year lease at $65 per square foot on the building's fourth and fifth floors for the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center; (2) a 9100-square-foot, 10-year lease for communications company Kreab & Gavin Anderson Worldwide, which will take the entire 18th floor at $65 per square foot; and (3) 1900 square feet to Hamilton Investment Funds over five years for half of the tower's 27th floor at $67 per square foot. Newmark Knight Frank chair Jeffrey Gural owns the neo-classical 515 Madison, which was built in 1931 and originally designed by J.E.R. Carpenter. Gural retained Rosen Johnson Architects in connection with the building's renovation project, which included an expansion and upgrades to the building's lobby.

Celebrity Hairstylist Oscar Blandi Inks Lease at LEED Gold Hopeful 545 Madison Avenue

Thu

May

by Stephen Del Percio

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Hairstylist Oscar Blandi- which counts Jennifer Garner, Selma Hayek, Renee Zellweger, and Katie Holmes as clients- has agreed to a 9300-square-foot lease at LEED for Core and Shell Gold-hopeful 545 Madison Avenue at East 55th Street. The deal is for the full second floor of retail space at around $80 per square foot; developer LCOR was originally seeking in the low $100s. The Post ’s Lois Weiss calls it "a great deal for brand new retail space along Madison Avenue." Newmark Knight Frank represented Blandi; Jones Lang LaSalle for LCOR. You may recall that, last June, British men’s clothier Alfred Dunhill signed a 10-year, 7000-square-foot lease on the 17-story building’s ground floor at a rumored $600 per square foot. LCOR has marketed the 17-story project’s 140,000 square feet of office space at seventeen (or fewer) boutique legal or financial services firms; New York City-based Moed de Armas & Shannon was the project’s architect.

Law Firm Pays $90 s/f at BXP's -EB 7 Times Square

Thu

Jul

by Stephen Del Percio

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The law firm Hiscock & Barclay signed a four-year lease earlier this week for 12,500 square feet of space at Boston Properties' 7 Times Square (Times Square Tower), which is currently seeking a LEED for Existing Buildings rating from USGBC. The firm is actually subleasing the space from another law firm- Brown Rudnick- and will pay approximately $90 per square foot. The 47-story, David Childs-designed Times Square Tower opened up back in 2004 without an anchor tenant after the Arthur Andersen implosion. Newmark Knight Frank represented Hiscock & Barclay in connection with the lease negotiations, with PBS Real Estate for Brown Rudnick.

Law Firm Moves to Midtown (Crain's)

Law Firm Purchases Manhattan's "Original" Green Building for $70M

Tue

Jul

by Stephen Del Percio

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It's important to keep in mind that sustainable, energy-efficient buildings do exist outside of the LEED rubric. Accordingly, 700 Broadway calls itself New York City's "original" green building; the 10-story, 100,000-square-foot tower dates from 1891 and is the former home of the National Audubon Society, which purchased the building in 1989 while it was abandoned during a much seedier era in the Village. The organization sold the building in 2006 to the Lincoln Property Company for $53 million and (as we wrote about recently) moved earlier this year to the seventh floor of 225 Varick Street. The Audubon Society has outfitted that space with a number of green design features in pursuit of a LEED for Commercial Interiors Platinum rating from USGBC.