SALES
Anbang, the Chinese insurance company that paid almost $2B for the Waldorf Astoria, will make another Plaza District acquisition that should run deep into the 10 figures. Anbang will reportedly buy all but the retail portion of 717 Fifth Ave. Last year, the Crown Building, just a block north and about 80K SF smaller than 717 Fifth Ave, sold for $1.7B. Nobody’s yet naming numbers or saying who will take the ground-floor retail condo of the 26-story, 350K SF office tower. Retail asking rents on that stretch of Fifth Avenue, the city’s most expensive and one of the top retail strips in the world, jumped by 24% last year to $3,118/SF, according to Cushman & Wakefield.
Acadia Realty Trust and O’Connor Capital Partners closed on a mixed-use property with office, retail and parking on the UES for $51M. The property’s called Wellington House, and it’s actually three buildings: 200-206 E 62nd St, 203 E 61st St and 1033-1049 Third Ave. CBRE VP Michael Kadosh and SVP Gary Trock repped both sides in the deal.
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L+M Development Partners with Nelson Management bought 257-271 South St on the LES for $115M. The New York Affordable Housing Preservation Fund and Citi Community Capital threw down some of the money for the buy and L+M will preserve the 236k SF building’s affordable housing. Jesse Deutch, Shimon Shkury and Victor Sozio of Ariel Property Advisors repped both the buyers and Starrett Corp, the seller.
FINANCING
Last week it came out that the MetLife Building will get a $1.4B refinancing package set up jointly through Bank of America and Wells Fargo. It’ll bring the value of the iconic Midtown East tower to nearly $3B. Sources told Bloomberg the loan would be chopped up into bonds and sold to investors. Landlord Tishman Speyer picked up the trophy property in 2005 for what we might nowadays call a song: $1.7B. Tishman looks to be holding onto it, though its roughly $1k/SF valuation puts it on par with top-notch Midtown office buildings that have been selling for 10 figures.
WeWork will lease 240k SF at 85 Broad St. It’ll be the first sizable deal in the former Goldman Sachs building. The 1.1M SF building is rated Platinum by WiredScore—the highest rating offered by the LEED-esque certification for buildings on Internet infrastructure. That asking rent was in the $50s to mid-$60s/SF.
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Bloomberg will expand its footprint by 150k SF when it moves into SL Green's 919 Third Ave. The new space is just down the street from the Bloomberg Tower at 731 Lexington Ave and another space it occupies at 120 Park Ave. With office rents in the mid-$50s/SF, that stretch of Third Avenue seems downright cheap compared to the $80s being paid in other parts of Midtown and Midtown South. Maybe bargain-hunting is the new pastime of choice for our former mayor?
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The Israeli Financial Services firm Bank Leumi USA signed a 58,548k SF lease at 250 Madison Ave. They’ll take the entire third, fourth and sixth floors of the 400k SF building owned by RFR, which was repped in-house by EVP Oliver Katcher and the JLL team of vice chairmen Alexander Chudnoff and Mitchell Konsker, SVP Diana Biasotti, SVP Dan Turkewitz and VP Matt Polhemus. Bank Leumi was repped by CBRE vice chairman Brian Gell, SVP Joan Meixner and senior financial analyst Brett Shannon.
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Co-working outfit Alley NYC signed a 36k SF lease at the Kaufman Organization's 119-125 W 24th St. Millennium Realty Group CEO Mark Kritzer repped Alley NYC, and Kaufman's Jessica Kosaric repped Kaufman in-house.
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Charles Schwab signed a 23k SF lease at the Durst Organization's 1133 Sixth Ave. CBRE first VP Chris Corrinet and EVP David Hollander repped Charles Schwab. Durst director of leasing Tom Bow and senior leasing manager Rocco Romeo repped Durst.
EXEC NEWS
CBRE’s Richard Hodos has been promoted to the rank of vice chairman. In 2013, Richard won REBNY’s “Ingenious Deal of the Year Award” (we snapped him above with CBRE colleague Dan Alesandro for that occasion). The ingenious deal brought Ralph Lauren into 38k SF at Coca-Cola's 711 Fifth Ave. He’s only the second retail broker in CBRE’s history to attain the rank.
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