January 2019 New York New Developments

NYC Major Developments:

Overall, November’s top office leases outpaced October’s top office leases. The 10 biggest deals signed last month totaled 1.8 million square feet, up 400,000 square feet from October’s total of 1.4 million square feet. The largest office lease in November was signed in Grand Central.

1. Bloomberg LP renewed its 11-year lease for 468,000 square feet of space at 120 Park Avenue.
2. Ralph Lauren expanded its lease for 350,000 square feet of space at 601 West 26th Street. RXR Realty refinanced the property with a $900 million loan from New York Community Bank.
3. Peloton signed a lease for 300,000 square feet at 441 Ninth Avenue and will serve as its new headquarters.
4. Twitter expanded its lease for an additional five years for 215,000 square feet at 249 West 17th Street. The landlord is Columbia Property Trust. Twitter currently sublets sections of the building to Lyft, Netflix and Major League Baseball.
5. Trade Desk signed a lease for 95,580 square feet at 1114 Sixth Avenue. Trade Desk will occupy the top three floors of the 49-story tower. Trade Desk shares space at 1114 Sixth Avenue with Capari America, the maker of household liquors, who signed a lease last February for 65,000 square feet in the building.
6. Syneos Health signed a 10-year lease for 86,500 square feet at 200 Vesey Street. The landlord is American Express. Syneos Health will take the 39th and 40th floors of the 2.5 million square foot office tower.
7. Broadridge Financial Solutions signed a 15-year lease for 85,000 square feet at 605 Third Avenue.
8. Moses & Singer renewed its 15-year lease for 73,485 square feet at the 68-story tower at 405 Lexington Avenue. The building’s landlord is Tishman Speyer.
9. EHE International signed a lease for 66,000 square feet at 600 Fifth Avenue.

WeWork signed a 15-year lease for 61,375 square feet of space at 57 East 11th Street.
Google plans to invest $1 billion in a new 1.7 million-square-foot Hudson Square campus. The tech giant will lease St. John’s Terminal at 550 Washington Street and take space nearby at 315 Hudson Street and 345 Hudson Street. Google now employs more than 7,000 people in New York City and has plans to double the size of its workforce.

Gyms and fitness centers signed six of the top 10 leases for the month, Health centers took two of the top spots.

November’s top 10 deals totaled less than half of October’s in terms of square footage. The 10 biggest retail lease deals signed last month totaled 120,800 square feet, down 232,600 square feet from October’s total of 353,400 square feet. The largest retail lease in November was signed in the Upper East Side.

1. Hospital for Special Surgery signed a 10-year lease for 17,000 square feet at 770 Lexington Avenue. The landlord is Terra Holdings.
2. Blink Fitness signed a lease for 17,000 square feet at 450 87th Street. The building’s landlord is Allied Properties.
3. Foodtown signed a 50-year lease for 15,000 square feet of space at All Year Management’s Denizen Bshwk. Foodtown is anchoring the firm’s redevelopment of the former Rheingold Brewery at 54 Noll Street. The 900-unit development has roughly 100,000 square feet of retail space which has already been leased to tenants. The asking rent for the space was $65 per square foot.
4. Blink Fitness, the Equinox Fitness subsidiary, signed a lease for 15,000 square feet at 130-20 Farmers Boulevard. The building’s landlord is RW Real Estate Group.
5. Blink Fitness took a spot for 15,000 square feet at 2870 Fulton Street. The building’s landlord is 2862-2874 Fulton Street LLC.
6. Neighborhood Radiology signed a lease for 13,628 square feet at 47-16 Greenpoint Avenue. The building’s landlord is AB Capstone.
7. Spin, the ping pong social club, signed a 5-year lease for 10,300 square feet at 3 East 54th Street. The landlord is Chen Brothers Realty Corporation.
Rumble, the trendy boxing gym, backed by celebrities signed a lease for 7,300 square feet at 415 Red Hook Lane. The landlords are Lonicera Partners and Quinlan Development Group.
8. My Gym, a children’s fitness center, signed a 10-year lease for 5,600 square feet at 209 Smith Street.
9. Don Pedro’s, a restaurant, signed a 15-year lease for 5,000 square feet of space at 505 Columbus Avenue.

Versace will become the latest high-profile retail tenant to leave 647 Fifth Avenue. Versace would ideally like to move farther uptown. The store is 20 years old, and its lease for the 25,020-square-foot property ends December 30th, 2023.

The Gap is closing down its 680 Fifth Avenue store at the beginning of next year.

Earlier, the company said it would shut hundreds of underperforming stores.

The store joins other brands that have recently vacated spots along Fifth Avenue, including Ralph Lauren Polo and Henri Bendel. The Gap has been in the building, which is owned by the Buchmann family and sits between West 53rd and 54th streets, since 1997.

Gucci has extended its lease in Soho for at least 10 years. The company signed a short-term lease at 375 West Broadway last year, its first location in the neighborhood. Now, Gucci has extended its lease in the 10,000-square-foot space for a decade or more. Asking rents in Soho in the third quarter were an average of $417 per square foot.

Woolrich signed a 10-year lease for 121 Wooster Street, an 8,000-square-foot space next to its current location. Earlier this year, local officials began putting together a proposal to change Soho’s zoning to allow more ground-floor retail and residential use.

IKEA is set to open its first Manhattan open a concept store in Lenox Hill. The Swedish furniture store will take over retail space at 999 Third Avenue.

The Time Warner Center will be renamed Deutsche Bank Center. Deutsche Bank is leasing more than 1 million square feet at the complex. Deutsche Bank, currently headquartered at 60 Wall Street, plans to move to the complex in the third quarter of 2021.

The nearly $400 million expansion of the American Museum of Natural History has been put on hold. The museum can’t move forward with the project while the ruling is being contested. The group sued to block the expansion. The plans for the Gilder Center include a five-story building spanning a 230,000-square-foot space along Columbus Avenue that would require the museum to take about a quarter-acre of Theodore Roosevelt Park.

Broad Street Development has locked in a roughly $101 million loan to fund its purchase of 370 Lexington Avenue. Broad Street agreed to buy the property for $190 million from Japanese investment company Unizo Holdings, which is offloading its $1 billion Manhattan portfolio.

Only two years after opening Saks Fifth Avenue’s women’s store is closing. Saks will close its 86,000-square-foot women’s store in Brookfield Place on Jan. 5 Saks is keeping its 16,700-square-foot men’s store open in Brookfield Place.

Vornado just moved one step forward with its major overhaul of Penn Plaza. The company filed plans to add 140,000 square feet of space to the 31-story Two Penn Plaza. Vornado plans to build a new three-story, lobby with retail space, modify the building’s existing entrance to Penn Station and expand the office floors.

Real Estate Equities Corporation, is building a 10-story office building near the southern end of the High Line. The roughly 100,000-square foot building will include retail space on the ground floor. REEC acquired the leasehold for the property, which consists of adjacent lots at 118 and 124 Tenth Avenue, for $21 million in January last year.

The Blackstone Group’s mortgage arm provided Highgate with nearly $250 million to finance its acquisition of the Park Central Hotel. Blackstone Mortgage Trust issued three loans totaling $247.57 million. Records list the purchase price at $366.17 million.

Atlas Hospitality secured a $40 million construction loan for its planned 128-key hotel tower in the Financial District. Bank of America provided the funding for the 26-story project at 120-122 Water Street. The development, called the Hotel Indigo, is scheduled to open in 2020.

One of the Financial District’s last standalone diners may soon be no more. A new 21-floor hotel is set to take the place of the Pearl Diner at 212 Pearl Street.

Actium Development Company filed a permit to convert a 13-story office building at 88 Wall Street into a 181-room hotel, plus add another story. The property was built in 1902. Actium, constructs and repositions luxury hospitality and retail assets.

Lendlease filed plans for its 42-story mixed-use project at the Union Theological Seminary’s 100 Claremont Avenue . It will span about 350,000 square feet including about 250,000 square feet of residential space and 25,000 square feet of community space. The project will house 175 residential units. Lendlease and its partner L+M purchased air rights from the seminary to construct the property. The seminary will buy space in the building for offices, classrooms and faculty housing, and the rest of the project will be private market-rate condos.

Top preservation battles at the Landmarks Preservation Commission:

1. Marx Brothers playground: AvalonBay Communities’ plan to build a 700-foot tower on the Upper East Side which rankles opponents who disagree with the developer’s plan to replace green space.
Preservationists want to save 270 Park Avenue, also known as the Union Carbide building. However the city didn’t landmark the tower when it rezoned Midtown East, and it looks unlikely that it will before JP Morgan tears it down to build new headquarters.
2. The Baptist Church of the Redeemer: Preservations pushed to save this nearly century-old church in Ditmas Park, but developer Mutual Housing Association of New York is moving forward with plans to build a nine-story residential building.
3. 550 Madison Avenue Developers: Olayan America and Chesfield America this year made changes to the lobby, which is not landmarked and is raising ire with preservationists.
4. The Frick Collection: The collection is planning a $160 million renovation designed by Annabelle Selldorf Architects. Opponents fought to have the garden preserved, but the LPC approved the expansion.
5. Hans S. Christian Memorial Kindergarten: The LPC sided with local residents and landmarked this French Renaissance-style structure in Carroll Gardens.
6. Broadway buildings fearful of techies spurring overdevelopment in the neighborhood. Locals want to landmark parts of Greenwich Village after the city announced plans to develop a tech hub on 14th Street.
7. Merchant’s House Museum: Locals want to stop a hotel from rising on the site of the Lower East Side’s Merchant House Museum.
S.W. Bowne Grain Storehouse: Gowanus residents have been trying for more than a decade to landmark this site, which is owned by the Chetrit Group. In June, a fire broke out in the warehouse, and the fire department said it was intentionally started.

The City Council has unanimously passed a rezoning of the Garment District.

The rezoning removes a requirement from 1987 that says property owners in parts of the neighborhood have to preserve industrial space at a one-to-one ratio with office space when converting manufacturing buildings to different uses. Landlords will now be able to convert their properties to office buildings as they see fit.

WeWork, the largest office tenant in Manhattan, has signed another lease in the city, in Midtown. The co-working company is taking about 236,000 square feet at 1440 Broadway. WeWork will occupy floors 14 through 21 of the 25-story office building, which is located between Bryant Park and Times Square.