Manhattan's Working on a Monster Leasing Year
The RFPs just keep coming, which means Manhattan's massive office leasing volume (2014 is on pace to become this decade's second "once in a decade" performance) will keep on chugging next year, too, Cushman & Wakefield tristate president Ron Lo Russo tells us. (We guess the "R" doesn't stand for relaxing summer.)
Ron says 21.4M SF has already leased through August, and the remaining four months are plenty of time for 2014 to beat 2011's record 30.1M SF. Relatively new sectors like tech have proven they can drive NYC growth, he says. (Announced yesterday: Squarespace, repped by CBRE, leased 100k SF in Trinity’s 225 Varick St.) Professional services firms supporting tech also will absorb space (think venture capitalists and law firm IP groups). Science and engineering companies, too, will look in NYC on behalf of employees who want to be near other smartypants (like Roche’s move this year from Nutley to Alexandria Center for Life Science). Once the financial services industry returns in full force (and Ron vows it will happen), it’ll have to compete for space with tenant pools it never had to worry about before.