SJP Properties

Back in November, we noted an article in Real Estate Weekly reporting that Proskauer Rose might pull out of its tentative agreement to take nearly 500,000 square feet of space at Boston Properties' LEED Gold hopeful 250 West 55th Street (which is currently in the midst of excavation and foundation work). The snag for Proskauer was a loss of financial incentives from Morgan Stanley to vacate its current space at 1585 Broadway early so that the (at the time) investment bank could take over all of the space in that tower.

Earlier this week, REW reported that Proskauer is now in negotiations with SJP Properties for that same 500,000-square-foot block of space at the star-crossed, LEED Gold hopeful 11 Times Square, which remains without a single tenant even after both its steel skeleton and concrete core topped out late last year. REW suggests that a deal would (finally) likely be at a discount from the $100 per square foot asking rent that SJP had refused to lower throughout 2008. (Note that the deal which law firm Gibson Dunn signed last year with Boston Properties at 250 West 55th Street was rumored to be in the low $100s per square foot.)

We can't stop writing about 11 Times Square here at gbNYC; the project continues to remain fascinating to us on a number of different levels. Designed by FXFOWLE and aiming for a LEED Gold rating, the 40-story tower has yet to land a single tenant despite assurances from developer SJP Properties that the building would be half-filled by this past summer. That, of course, was before the credit crunch, and the project has, at least in our opinion, become the paradigm for green building projects that continue to move forward through the current market turmoil.

I spent a few months a couple of years ago reviewing documents out at a client’s in Iselin, New Jersey. I’d take the train out from Penn Station to Metropark, a station serving a sprawling office park plunked down at the crossroads of New Jersey, which sits quite literally in between the intersection of the Garden State Parkway and New Jersey Turnpike, about 45 minutes from Midtown and and Philadelphia on the Northeast Corridor. Parking garages are linked to the station (which is currently undergoing a $30 million dollar renovation) and low-rise corporate office buildings are easily accessible as well. Although there’s no residential component (or any real pedestrian access to speak of), I always thought of Metropark as a type of transit-oriented development; quick access to major roads with easy rail connections to the entire Northeast and Newark Airport.

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