This Week's N.Y. Deal Sheet
Lexington Avenue was the place to be in NYC last week, as the week's biggest building sale and a trio of sizable leases all closed on the major Midtown thoroughfare.
TOP LEASES
Bank of America, after leasing all of the 386K SF HBO headquarters at 1100 Sixth Ave., is taking up even more space around Bryant Park. The banking giant has signed a 127K SF lease for three floors at the Grace Building, the curved skyscraper at 1114 Sixth Ave., The Real Deal reports. Brookfield and The Swig Co. own the building, as well as the leasehold on 1100 Sixth, and completed leases in back-to-back weeks following Humanscale's 33K SF deal last week.
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WeWork's first big New York City deal of 2018 crossed the wires Monday night, when its lease for 112K SF at 750 Lexington Ave. became public. The co-working giant is already one of New York's biggest occupiers of leased space, but it has not shown any indication that its appetite for Manhattan locations has slowed. Asking rent was reportedly $80/SF in the Cohen Brothers Realty Corp.-owned tower. WeWork was not represented by a broker, and Cohen was represented in-house by Marc Horowitz.
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Greenberg Traurig made a big splash last week when it announced it would take four full floors in One Vanderbilt, SL Green's under-construction supertall in Midtown. The law firm will move from its current offices at the nearby MetLife Building in 2021, and move into space expected to cost more than $130/SF. Newmark Knight Frank CEO Barry Gosin and Vice Chairman Moshe Sukenik represented the law firm, while CBRE's Robert Alexander, Emily Jones, Sarah Pontius and Ryan Alexander represented SL Green.
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SL Green also picked up a pair of leases at 485 Lexington Ave. last week, announcing it had signed Columbia Management Investment Advisors and Ankura Consulting Group to deals totaling roughly 69K SF. Also known as Columbia Threadneedle Investments, the Boston-based firm will move from 100 Park Ave. this year. Ankura will take a little less than 30K SF at the tower, where it will move from 750 Third Ave. Both 750 Third and 100 Park are SL Green properties.
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Knotel had a big few days in Manhattan, announcing three new leases, including two in SoHo. Last week, it announced it was leasing 24K SF at 584 Broadway and 15K SF at 1 State St. in FiDi. Tuesday morning, Knotel announced its second full-building deal, taking 14K SF over 10 years at 521 Broadway. Skylight brokered the leases at 521 and 584 Broadway, while Knotel represented itself at 1 State St., where it already occupies 46K SF.
TOP SALES
As expected, SL Green closed on its sale of 600 Lexington Ave. last week, selling the Plaza District tower for $305M. Connecticut-based insurance company W.R. Berkley Corp. acquired the 33-story, 303K SF office tower, which is 99% leased. After years of foreign buyers winning bidding wars for Manhattan office properties, another domestic firm has made a deal.
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Two SoHo office buildings, at 30 and 32 Howard St., will be combined into one after being sold to Intercontinental Real Estate Corp. and K Property Group. The Monsees family, whose ladder-building business once occupied the two properties, according to The Real Deal, sold the buildings for $46M. The new owners will redevelop them into 42K SF of largely pre-built office space, which they expect to be complete in 2019.
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The four-story, 14K SF office and retail building at 204 Fifth Ave. in Flatiron has sold for $42.45M, a price tag that pencils out to nearly $3K/SF. Artemis Partners sold the property, which was built in 1913, to Porven Real Estate, a subsidiary of Spanish interior design retailer Porcelanosa, according to The Real Deal. The property had previously sold just a year earlier for $29M, according to property records. Porcelanosa owns 202 Fifth Ave. next door, and plans to combine the properties into a flagship retail property.
Sales data courtesy of Reonomy
TOP FINANCING DEALS
A joint venture of the Blackstone Group and Fairstead Capital has secured a $480M loan for its Upper East Side multifamily portfolio from the Bank of China. The loan is pegged to 1485 First Ave., which Blackstone and Fairstead sold last week to investor Lee Rothman for $11.1M.
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RXR Realty nailed down a $285M loan for 1330 Sixth Ave. from German lender DekaBank Deutsche Girozentrale. The loan continues a pattern of RXR holding onto its office properties at this point of the cycle, opting to refinance its mortgages instead. The debt replaces a previous loan from New York Community Bank and includes a new $97M mortgage.
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The Vanbarton Group has landed a refinancing for its Penn Plaza office building at 132 West 31st St. The office owner secured a $168.4M loan from Morgan Stanley for its 444K SF office building, which it refers to as 31 Penn Plaza.
Financing data courtesy of Reonomy
