This Week's N.Y. Deal Sheet
After January was a little light on office leasing, the first full week of February exploded with deals, including several big names signing up for expansions and new offices.
TOP LEASES
Facebook is growing again in its Manhattan headquarters. The social media giant signed a 78K SF lease for the third floor at 770 Broadway, Vornado CEO Steve Roth said on the company's earnings call Tuesday morning. Vornado bought Kmart out of its space on the floor, clearing the path for Facebook to grow to occupying 513K SF in the building. Kmart, owned by Sears, still has 82K SF on the building's lower floors, and 18 years remaining on its lease, Roth said. Brokers in the deal were not immediately clear.
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Nasdaq, where many of the world's biggest companies list their stock, is leaving the Financial District. The exchange is decamping for a 145K SF spread at 4 Times Square, the Durst Organization-owned former headquarters of Condé Nast. Nasdaq, which already had an event space, MarketSite, in the building, will move into the renovated space in phases by 2020. Newmark Knight Frank’s Michael Ippolito and Cushman & Wakefield’s Robert Tanzmann represented Nasdaq, while Tom Bow, Rocco Romeo and Tanya Grimaldo represented Durst in-house.
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WeWork is chasing another enterprise user to take all of a big co-working location, this time with a 122K SF lease at 154 West 14th St. WeWork will occupy almost all of the 166K SF, Abner Properties-owned building, but it plans to manage that space on behalf of one corporate user, like the deals it struck with IBM and Amazon for locations elsewhere in Manhattan last year. Koeppel Rosen brokered the lease.
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A gay men's health organization is leaving 5 Manhattan West for an office in the Garment District. Gay Men's Health Crisis signed a lease for 110K SF at 307 West 38th St., owned by George Comfort & Sons. The nonprofit said the move would make it more accessible to its clients, and will offer a dining room along with offices, health clinics, counseling rooms and a rooftop space. Savills Studley’s Ira Schuman and Stephan Steiner represented GMHC, and George Comfort & Sons’ Se Kyung Kim represented the landlord in-house.
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Uber has signed a lease to put its engineering team in a second New York City headquarters at 1400 Broadway. The ride-sharing company signed a 35K SF lease for the 12th floor at the building, owned by Empire State Realty Trust. CBRE’s Sacha Zarba and Alice Fair represented Uber in the deal, for which asking rents were around $62/SF. NKF's Scott Klau, Erik Harris and Neil Rubin represented ESRT along with in-house broker Keith Cody.
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ALM Media, which publishes The National Law Journal, ThinkAdvisor, GlobeSt and Real Estate Forum, is decamping from its offices at 120 Broadway to Midtown East. ALM signed a 46K SF lease for the mezzanine floor at 150 East 42nd St., across the street from Grand Central Terminal, where it will move in Q3. Colliers International’s Michael Cohen, Leon Manoff and Robert Goodman represented ALM, while CBRE's Scott Gottlieb and Brian Dooley represented the landlord of the Mobil building, David Werner.
TOP SALES
Vornado has sold its retail condominiums in the Marquand Building on the Upper East Side. Status Capital, owned by Ralph and David Sitt, paid $82M for the commercial condos in 11 East 68th St., according to city property records, below the $85M number when the sale was reported last month. The condo, which partly fronts Madison Avenue, is leased to a trio of apparel retailers.
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John Catsimatidis is growing his Brooklyn property empire. The billionaire owner of Red Apple Group and the Gristedes supermarket chain has acquired 670 Pacific St., a recently developed apartment building near Barclays Center. Read Property Group developed the 86-unit property and sold it to Red Apple for $69.2M in a deal brokered by GFI Realty.
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Nonprofit Nuevo El Barrio para la Rehabilitación de Vivienda y Economía, or NERVE, is acquiring the affordable housing building at 1680 Madison Ave. that it had previously owned a stake in. NERVE, along with joint venture partners Belveron Partners, NCV Capital Partners and Hudson Valley Property Group bought the building for $57M from Metropolitan Realty Group. Metropolitan Realty had previously agreed to sell the building, known as Los Tres Unidos, to L+M Development Group, but NERVE sued to block the sale.
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Aby Rosen's RFR Realty has acquired eight retail condos from the rapidly shrinking New York REIT portfolio. The eight condos make up the street level of 122 Greenwich Ave., also known as One Jackson Square, and Rosen paid $31M to acquire them. The 43K SF space in West Chelsea sits below a glassy rental and condo building.
Sales data courtesy of Reonomy
TOP FINANCING DEALS
The owners of Victoria Tower, a 99-unit condominium building in the heart of Flushing, Queens, have secured a mortgage refinancing for 18 condos, including the parking and retail, in the 21-story building. The $94M loan was issued to Flushing Landmark Realty LLC, Wu Towers LLC, Victoria Towers Development Corp. and Lucky Star-Deer Park LLC from The Bluestone Group, a Westchester-based bridge lender. Jeffrey Wu, the owner of the Hong Kong Supermarket chain, developed the building.
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To secure its acquisition of commercial condos at 11 East 68th St., Status Capital took out a $60M acquisition loan from Luxembourg lender Banque J. Safra Sarasin.
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L+M Development Partners went on a Northern Manhattan buying spree, purchasing apartment portfolios on the Upper West Side and in Harlem. The acquisitions combined for well over $70M, and to back them, L+M secured acquisition financing from Citibank to the tune of $54M.
Financing data courtesy of Reonomy
