All Posts Tagged With: "510 Madison Avenue"

Hedge fund HBK Investments, which last summer signed on for LEED Platinum hopeful Bank of America Tower’s 40th floor at $135 per square foot, has officially terminated its commitment for 12,000 square feet of that space. The Dallas-based firm will still retain 24,000 square feet on the 40th floor and the Dursts will now seek to lease the freshly freed space for an incredible $185 per square foot. The only space in the building that remains in addition to HBK’s former space is 30,000 square feet on the 37th floor, where the Dursts are asking the same rent; the family will consider partitioning either space into blocks for smaller tenants. According to Eric Engelhardt, one of Durst’s vice presidents for leasing, “[t]here is a greater universe of smaller tenants looking for high end space.”

Although Apple recently backed off leasing office space at Macklowe Properties’ LEED Gold hopeful 510 Madison Avenue, the developer does have some fresh good news to share in advance of today’s planned topping off of the 350,000-square-foot, 30-story tower. Famed luxury watch purveryor Tourneau has inked a 3300-square-foot lease for retail space at the building’s East 53rd Street corner. Macklowe Chairman and CEO Billy Macklowe told the New York Post that the property should be ready for occupancy by the end of the year. Although Macklowe has only inked one office tenant to date (investment outfit Jay Goldman & Co.), Mr. Macklowe is confident that the tower will perform as planned. “I think all markets cycle,” he told the Post. “We’re still in the Plaza District, the premier business district in Manhattan.” The Post reports that the project’s shimmering glass curtain wall- already rising along Madison Avenue- is debuting to rave reviews from neighboring tenants. Asking rents for the retail space secured by Torneau were $600 per square foot.

Late yesterday, Crain’s reported that JPMorgan Chase will move its investment banking operations into the former offices of Bear Stearns on Madison Avenue at 47th Street in Midtown, which JPMorgan purchased on Monday in the aftermath of Bear’s meltdown last week. The decision places the proposed LEED Platinum Beer Belly Building project at 5 World Trade Center in jeopardy- if not completely shelving it- though according to a spokesman the bank is still considering its options in connection with the site. Crain’s also reports that JPMorgan will continue negotiating with the Port Authority about building at 5 WTC, but the same spokesman “couldn’t say what might be built . . . or when a decision would be reached.”

In an article that appears in this week’s edition of Real Estate Weekly (but is not available online), Stephen Pozycki, head of New Jersey-based SJP Properties, discusses the state of the New York City commercial real estate market in light of the recent U.S. economic woes. SJP, as you may recall, is building the speculative, LEED Silver 11 Times Square at the corner of 42nd Street and 8th Avenue (just across the street from the New York Times Tower). Last fall, we discussed the project in the context of the subprime lending meltdown and what it might mean for green building generally. Pozycki told Real Estate Weekly that he expects the tower to be half-filled with tenants by summer and that “[t]here’s just not many of these new green buildings that are being built in the city.” He noted the lack of available space in new green towers from the Times, Hearst, Bank of America, and also pointed to Boston Properties’ plans for a LEED Gold building, targeted specifically for law firms, at West 55th Street.

A few green addresses of note jump off the most recent CoStar Group list of the largest contiguous blocks of office space currently available in Manhattan (as of December 31, 2007). The list appears in the Real Estate Report in this week’s edition of Crain’s. Topping the list is SJP Properties’ LEED Silver hopeful 11 [...]