In less than one year, Boston Properties leases 85 percent of former Lehman building

Forgiveness may be the key to success at 399 Park Avenue, where a perceived snub several weeks ago caused owner Boston Properties to swap hedge fund Avenue Capital for commercial brokerage Studley on an 11th-floor, 60,000-square-foot lease. Avenue Capital has since resumed talks with Boston, yesterday signing off on a 57,000-square-foot lease on the sixth floor of the former Lehman Brothers building. Boston’s leasing agent, John Powers of CB Richard Ellis, called the incident a “hiccup” from which the parties decided to “move on.” The result is a move that gets the hedge fund nearly the same amount of space as it would have had on the 11th floor, and a better layout than its current one at 535 Madison Avenue, where the company is fragmented across five floors. For Boston Properties, the deal means it has re-leased 85 percent of the former Lehman building in the span of less than one year.