85 Broad Street

Media company Nielsen hasn’t found a sublet for its Midtown South office space but is already nearing a deal for replacement space in bargain-friendly Lower Manhattan. The Wall Street Journal reported that it is negotiating for about 160,000 square feet at 85 Broad Street, the former headquarters of Goldman Sachs.

Nielsen is currently located at 770 Broadway, a Vornado Realty Trust building on East Ninth Street that also houses AOL, Huffington Post and J. Crew. In June, it commissioned CBRE Group to find a taker for its 158,000 square feet. [more]

In a large-scale restructuring of its New York City offices, financial services firm Oppenheimer & Co. is investing $15 million in the opening of its new headquarters at 85 Broad Street, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced today.

The company will be consolidating its current headquarters at 125 Broad Street and other city offices including 200 Park Avenue and 300 Madison Avenue at the location. The expansion is slated to create 100 new financial services jobs.

“After the attacks of 9/11, we made a firm commitment to rebuilding Lower Manhattan and making it a more attractive place than ever to live and do business,” Bloomberg said. “Today’s announcement that Oppenheimer & Co. will move hundreds of jobs to Lower Manhattan is the latest evidence that our efforts are succeeding.” – Katherine Clarke… [more]

From left: 85 Broad Street, 70 Pine Street, One New York Plaza and Elizabeth Berger, president of the Alliance for Downtown New York (left two photos, source: PropertyShark)

Lower Manhattan office leasing activity through the first three quarters of the year has continued to outpace 2009, according to the Alliance for Downtown New York’s quarterly real estate market overview, even as third-quarter data shows moderat… [more]

Newmark’s Barry Gosin

The commercial real estate rumor mill is buzzing with reports that Morgan Stanley is mulling a move to the 1 million square feet Goldman Sachs vacated at 85 Broad Street when it moved to its new 200 West Street tower, but the Post’s Steve Cuozzo notes that the rumors probably aren’t true. In fact, his sources gossiped that Morgan Stanley, despite having hired Newmark Knight Frank’s Barry Gosin to help the bank hunt for downtown space, is actually angling to stay at 1 New York Plaza when its 700,000-square-foot lease expires in 2013. Morgan Stanley did check out 85 Broad, but it’s possible that all the talk about moving is a ploy to convince landlord Brookfield Properties to negotiate a cheaper renewal lease and possible 300,000-square-foot expansion at 1 New York Plaza, according to Cuozzo. “So, they’re trying to use 85 Broad as a stalking horse to persuade Brookfield how nice it would be to keep them,” one source said. [Post]

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From left: Kenneth McCarthy, Joe Harbert and 85 Broad Street (building photo source: PropertyShark)

Manhattan landlords received positive news last quarter as leasing deal volume remained high, but the market continued to show evidence of weakness through a slight rise in the amount of available office space for rent, figures released… [more]

70 Pine Street and Young Woo

More than 500,000 square feet of office space has just been put up for lease at 70 Pine Street, the former headquarters of AIG, the Wall Street Journal reported. An excess of unused office space in Downtown Manhattan resulted in more than 5.9 million square feet of space being added to the market during a 12-month period ending in April, according to Cushman & Wakefield. The asking price for the AIG space, which was purchased with neighboring 72 Wall Street for $150 million last year by Youngwoo & Associates, is between $33 and $35 a square foot. Asking rents are down 25 to 30 percent from what they were at the market’s peak, brokers said. Other large blocks of city space that have been vacated by financial companies are now available at 40 Wall Street, 85 Broad Street, 125 Broad Street and 77 Water Street. [WSJ]

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Not all is well at Goldman Sach’s new $2.1 billion headquarters at 200 West Street. The 43-story tower, which offers panoramic views of the New York Harbor, a 54,000-square-foot gym with steam rooms and group fitness classes from 5:45 a.m. to 7:50 p.m., only has enough windowed offices for its 300-something partners. Managing directors sit in windowless inside offices while vice presidents have been relegated to open-space workbenches. At the company’s former headquarters, 85 Broad Street, vice presidents had offices. “I used to have an office with a view,” one managing director told the Wall Street Journal. “Now I need binoculars to see sunlight.” Luckily, all employees can still soak in the sun at the 11th-floor, glass ceiling Sky Lobby, where the company’s cafeteria serves an array of panini and cupcake options. [WSJ]

New Manhattan office leasing volume in the first quarter reached its highest level in four years but the total vacancy rate continued to climb with the addition of new available space to the market, commercial firm Cushman & Wakefield reported in a first-quarter briefing this morning.

There was 5.6 million square feet in new leases, which excludes renewals, in the first quarter of 2010, nearly doubling the 3.1 million square feet from the same period in 2009 and the best quarter since 5.9 million square feet was taken in the first three months of 2006, Cushman reported.

With the addition of new space at 11 Times Square in Midtown and 85 Broad Street Downtown, the overall vacancy rate went up. The vacancy rate for Class A buildings in Midtown’s Times Square South submarket shot up to 27 percent last quarter from 14 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009 because of the addition of SJP Properties’s 1.1 million-square-foot 11 Times Square. … [more]

The vacancy rate Downtown rose sharply as Goldman Sachs’ former headquarters building, the 1.1 million-square-foot tower at 85 Broad Street, was officially added as available to the leasing market, commercial services firm Cassidy Turley said in its monthly Manhattan office leasing report released today (click here to see full report).

The vacancy rate Downtown rose by more than a percentage point to 12.2 percent in March from 11.1 percent in February because of the addition, the report says.

The building also drove Manhattan’s Class A vacancy rate to its highest level in 13 years, the report says, reaching 12.8 percent in March. TRD… [more]

Lower Manhattan, the country’s best-performing office market, is struggling to hang on to its title as vacancies mount. Though the Financial District fared relatively well during the commercial property slide, demand is no longer keeping up with increasing inventory. Goldman Sachs, American International Group and Bank of America are among the major tenants relocating, which follows the flight of firms like Lehman Brothers after Sept. 11, 2001. Goldman Sachs is moving to its new West Street building and vacating 2 million square feet offices including 85 Broad Street and 1 New York Plaza. AIG last year sold its 70 Pine Street and 72 Wall Street headquarters. Bank of America, meanwhile, is moving its employees into a new Midtown tower at One Bryant Park, and it remains to be seen what will happen to the World Financial Center offices of Merrill Lynch, which it acquired last year. Cushman & Wakefield expects Lower Manhattan’s vacancy rate to hit 14 percent by late next year — the highest since 1997 — and the 4.4 million square feet of office space planned for the two new towers going up at the World Trade Center isn’t helping that metric. “The amount of space that’s potentially going to come to the market will increase availabilities and put pressure on pricing,” said Kenneth McCarthy, who heads New York-area research for Cushman & Wakefield. [Bloomberg]