From the May issue: Two big office deals — each for more than 1 million square feet — provided a statistical lift that ended an extremely slow three-month leasing stretch in Manhattan. Indeed, last month saw 4.9 million square feet of Manhattan office space leased, compared to 6.1 million square feet for all of January, February and March combined.

Contributing to the uptick was media giant Viacom, which signed a 15-year renewal and lease expansion last month that runs through 2031. The move will ultimately give the company the entire 1.6 million-square-foot office portion of SL Green Realty’s 1515 Broadway. [more]

From left: 1 New York Plaza and 1515 Broadway

While two large recent deals may signal Manhattan’s office leasing market is finally thawing, the New York Post said industry insiders remain concerned because neither represented a relocation. In both Viacom’s agreement for 1.6 million square feet at 1515 Broadway and Morgan Stanley’s deal for 1.1 million square feet at One New York Plaza, the tenants were never close to making commitments to — and thereby solidifying — one of the city’s new towers, such as the World Trade Center buildings, 11 Times Square, 250 West 55th Street, and the office portion of the International Gem Tower. [more]

From left: 1515 Broadway, SL Green CEO Marc Holliday and the CBRE Group team of Michael Laginestra, Scott Gottlieb, Andrew Sussman and Ramneek Rikhy

SL Green said it renewed the 1.4 million-square-foot lease for Viacom’s headquarters at 1515 Broadway through 2031, and Viacom will expand the space to 1.6 million square feet, making it the biggest lease in New York City history that didn’t involve a sale-leaseback transaction. Viacom, which has anchored the Times Square office building for more than 20 years, will expand into the larger space after the year 2020. Viacom had been the subject of speculation for several years over whether it would move. [more]

The Starrett-Lehigh Building

From the October issue: In December 2007, less than a year before the fall of Lehman Brothers and as the vise of the credit crunch was tightening, SL Green Realty closed on one of the biggest deals of the decade: $1.575 billion for 388 and 390 Greenwich Street, the 2.6 million-square-foot office complex then occupied largely by Citigroup.

But SL Green, New York’s biggest commercial landlord, did not act alone in the $598-a-square-foot purchase. It had a little help from some loonies, or Canadian dollars. The REIT’s minority partner on the deal, taking a 49.4 percent stake, was SITQ, the real estate investment wing of Caisse de Dépôt et Placement du Québec, a Montreal-based pension fund. (SITQ has since merged with Caisse’s other real estate subsidiary, and now goes by the name Ivanhoe Cambridge.) [more]

From left: Broadway Partners CEO Scott Lawler, 280 Park Avenue and 450 West 33rd Street

Recapitalizations are driving the Manhattan commercial real estate market as investors try to better position debt of properties acquired during the boom. Crain’s reported that one-third of all commercial transactions by dollar volume, and seven of the 10 largest office transactions, were recaps. In total, $5.4 billion worth of recapitalizations have occurred thus far in 2011, compared to $2.6 billion in all of 2010.

Two of the largest such transactions involved properties Broadway Partners acquired during the boom, Crain’s noted. In April, Brookfield Office Properties took responsibility for $517 million worth of debt Broadway Partners had at 450 West 33rd Street, a 1.6 million-square-foot office building Broadway bought in 2007, and earned a majority stake in the property. [more]

Fresh off his joint $136 million purchase with SL Green of 1552 Broadway, the Times Square commercial property that houses TGI Friday’s, Jeff Sutton has become one of the most prominent retail landlords in the city, The New York Observer said. According to the profile, in which Sutton declined to participate (as he did for a recent story by The Real Deal on his Manhattan activity), the Gravesend, Brooklyn-native started his march to the top in the early 1990s with a risky strategy: he would get the lease first, and then buy the space with the lease money. He used the strategy first with Payless Shoes and then CVS, before landing his big break in 2002, signing American Girl at 609 Fifth Avenue.
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Jeff Sutton and 1552 Broadway

SL Green Realty and Jeff Sutton are in contract to purchase the landmarked I. Miller Shoe Building at 1552 Broadway for $135 million from the Riese Organization, the Post reported. The joint venture, which is slated to close on the purchase by summertime, is likely to shutter the building’s iconic TGI Friday’s, a source said, and replace it with “a use that no one has thought of.” The 15,000-square-foot property comes with some air rights as well as two billboards that can be upgraded to LED signs and the approvals necessary to build a third sign. [more]

SL Green Realty has bought out its joint venture partner in Times Square’s 1515 Broadway, giving the city’s largest office landlord full ownership of the property in a transaction valuing it at $1.21 billion, the company announced today. SL Green had owned the 1.75 million-square-foot building with SITQ, a subsidiary of Canadian investment fund Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, one of several joint ventures for the pair throughout the city. TRD [more]

From left: Joanne Podell, 521 Fifth Avenue and 1515 Broadway

After an overall strong second quarter, Manhattan’s prime shopping corridors showed mixed results last quarter with rents falling or remaining flat and vacancy rates climbing in more than half the districts tracked, a new rep [more]

It looks like 2010 is going to turn out to be another year when Canadian pension fund [more]