Worldwide Plaza at 825 Eighth Avenue

WNET, the parent company of public television’s Channel 13, has signed a 95,000-square-foot lease at Worldwide Plaza at 825 Eighth Avenue between 49th and 50th streets, taking two floors in the 1.8 million-square-foot tower, the Post reported. Terms for the Worldwide Plaza lease were not released, but asking rents there run from $52 to $59 a square foot. The deal marks an important step forward for the building, which was purchased last year from Deutsche Bank for $605 million by a George Comfort & Sons-led partnership after Deutsche took it back from Harry Macklowe. The WNET deal is the first section being leased out of the 640,000 square feet that became available after advertising agency Ogilvy & Mather moved out in 2009 (note: correction appended). WNET will move from its current corporate headquarters at 450 West 33rd Street by the end of the year. WNET was represented by Cushman & Wakefield’s Charles Borrok and Barry Zeller in the transaction. The landlord was represented in-house by Peter Duncan, George Comfort CEO and president, and Matthew Coudert, executive vice president. [Post, 1st item]

Worldwide Plaza

WebMD, the online medical resource, has taken 50,000 square feet on the 11th floor of Worldwide Plaza as part of its national expansion plan. WebMD, whose headquarters are located at 111 Eighth Avenue, had conducted an “extensive search throughout Midtown South” for more space before settling on Worldwide Plaza at 825 Eighth Avenue, according to Newmark Knight Frank, whose David Falk and Kyle Ciminelli represented the website in the transaction. Since launching its expansion campaign in 2008, WebMD has signed leases in Chicago and Montreal, and also recently more than doubled its office space in Atlanta, Ga. TRD

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The top 50 biggest Manhattan commercial property purchases last year ranged in price from $10.6 million to $600 million, according to The Real Deal’s 2010 Data Book (see the top 50 biggest commercial buys after the jump). The $600 million deal was the purchase of Worldwide Plaza at 825 Eighth Avenue by an investment group led by George Comfort & Sons and RCG Longview from Deutsche Bank. The $10.6 million deal was the sale of a second-floor office condominium at 415 West 13th Street to luxury menswear designer Canali USA. To purchase the 2010 Data Book, click on the magazine cover, click here or see the link at the top of The Real Deal Web site. [more]

444 Madison Avenue (source: PropertyShark)

From the January issue: New York City’s top commercial brokerages have jockeyed for market
share over the past few years, but in a surprise upset, Eastdil Secured
has emerged on top. According to an analysis by The Real Deal — which was based
on data provided by Real Capital Analytics for Manhattan commercial
transactions of $5 million and above — the firm had more than $15
billion in sales from the first quarter of 2007 through the third
quarter of 2009. CB Richard Ellis ranked second with more than $12 billion in
building sales, while Cushman & Wakefield ranked third with more
than $10 billion, according to the RCA data.
But Eastdil’s ranking is largely due to a unique set of circumstances:
The firm handled the $7 billion sale of Equity Office Properties’
Midtown portfolio to Macklowe Properties in 2007. Without that deal,
Eastdil would have slid to third place. [more]

Ogilvy is a tenant in 636 11th Avenue (Building photo source: PropertyShark)

The much-heralded plan announced two years ago by international advertising agency Ogilvy & Mather to move from Worldwide Plaza to a former candy manufacturing plant at 636 11th Avenue has hit a rough patch, with the new landlord allegedly moving toward kicking the company out. Ogilvy Group, a subsidiary of Dublin-based WPP Group, claims that 636 11th Avenue building owner Hakimian Organization is threatening to terminate the $600 million, 20-year lease, so the ad agency sued the ownership entity Plaza West Associates to block any eviction moves. Ogilvy Group claims in the lawsuit filed in New York State Supreme Court Jan. 5 that Hakimian has not completed parts of agreed-to tenant improvements, leading the ad firm to claim the landlord owes as much as $50 million in rent abatements and other damages. The ad firm alleges in the court papers that after it sought binding arbitration in October to resolve the dispute, Hakimian sent a notice Dec. 9 giving the agency until this Thursday to cure five alleged non-monetary defaults or the landlord would move to terminate the lease, but Ogilvy says it is not in default. [more]

The Manhattan multifamily and commercial sales markets showed signs of improvement in the third quarter of 2009, while the office leasing market continued to be plagued by an increasing inventory of inexpensive sublease space and a shrinking workforce, according to a report released by Eastern Consolidated today.
Sales of multifamily residential buildings in Manhattan increased, to 101 transactions totaling $392 million in the third quarter, from 66 valued at $254 million in the quarter earlier, the report said. The average transaction was valued at $271 per square foot, up from $260 per square foot in the second quarter. For commercial buildings, property sales volume was up to $1.08 billion from $510 million in the quarter earlier, though that number was largely driven by the sale of 825 Eighth Avenue for $605 million and 70 Pine Street/72 Wall Street for $150 million, two large transactions. TRD [more]

From left: Worldwide Plaza, Peter Duncan

Real estate investor Peter Duncan, who scored a deal on the 49-story Worldwide Plaza building in July, now has the chance to shape the New York commercial real estate market’s investment landscape. Duncan, who is president of George Comfort & Sons, purchased the property at 825 Eighth Avenue for $590 million, roughly a third of what Harry Macklowe paid for it in February 2007. The price means Duncan might be able to lease out the first 14 floors, which stand vacant as the second-largest empty space in the city, for as little as $30 or $40 per square foot, according to Robert Sammons, research director at Colliers ABR. Whereas Midtown office buildings have had a rough year — CB Richard Ellis Group reported that there have been no single leases in the area for more than 250,000 square feet — low prices may hasten leasing activity for the space in Duncan’s building formerly occupied by advertising firm Ogilvy & Mather. That could, in turn, encourage other investors to take on risk in buying up more New York office buildings, said Jim Frederick, also of Colliers.
[Bloomberg] [more]

From the October issue: As the real estate industry scrambles to unwind billions of dollars in
distressed inventory, a number of high-profile deals are stuck in
neutral as lenders battle it out with each other to see who will get
paid and who will be left holding the (empty) bag. While creditors often turn on each other during a workout, the massive
number of securitized loans with multiple lenders and third-party
servicing firms managing the funds is creating a level of complexity
that may take years to sort out, analysts said. Unlike the previous downturn in the 1990s, the majority of large deals
during the recent real estate boom were made using securitized loans –
or at least loans with large syndicates, or groups of lenders sharing
the burden of a single loan.