From left: Darcy Stacom and Bill Shanahan, vice chairmen of CBRE, and 4 New York PlazaThe 1.1 million-square-foot office tower at 4 New York Plaza is being marketed for a sale by a Darcy Stacom and Bill Shanahan-led CBRE Group team, according to the New York Post.

The building, at 115 Broad Street near Water Street, is 95 percent occupied, thanks largely to an 800,000-square-foot lease held by JPMorgan Chase that runs through 2025. The New York Daily News and American Media are also tenants of the building.

The building is owned by Virginia-based Harbor Group, which purchased the building for just $108 million — a recession-friendly price, according to the Post — in January 2010. [more]

REBNY head Stephen Spinola

From the December issue: The more than 12,000 members of the Real Estate Board of New York will soon be reaching for their checkbooks to send their annual dues to the influential trade group. And there’s no doubt many will be engaging in a yearly cost-benefit analysis of the nonprofit’s value.

Members pay more than $6 million per year in dues — which are supposed to be in on Jan. 1 — and the group takes in several million more through its annual gala and other income that make up its approximately $9 million annual budget.

The 115-year-old organization is the undisputed top real estate organization in the city, and presents a powerful and unified public front. But there are rumblings of discontent, partly because it operates with a lopsided distribution of power. For example, building owners and residential firms are contributing roughly the same amount of money to the organization, but owners outnumber residential brokers on the board 10 to 1. 

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Retail conglomerate Limited Brands has inked a deal for almost 100,000 square feet of office space at 1740 Broadway, at 56th Street, the New York Observer reported.

The company, which owns retailers such as Victoria’s Secret and Bath and Body Works, has signed for floors 14 through 17 in a 10-year lease, engineered to coincide with the expiration of their other space in the Vornado-owned building, where they currently lease approximately another 400,000 square feet.

Sources told the Observer that the rent was in the $60s per square foot. [more]

From left: Mary Ann Tighe of CBRE, Jimmy Kuhn of Newmark and 3 Columbus CircleAdvertising behemoth the Young & Rubicam Group will move into 340,000 square feet at SL Green’s 3 Columbus Circle, in a commercial condominium purchase and lease, the New York Times reported. The move marks the last major advertising agency to defect from Madison Avenue, the street that is synonymous with the industry as a whole.

Young & Rubicam took a condo interest in 214,372 square feet on floors three through eight, and signed a 20-year lease for 124,760 square feet on floors 9, 10, 18 and 19 at the 26-story tower. Three Columbus Circle, also known as 1775 Broadway, occupies the entire block between Eighth Avenue and Broadway at 59th Street. The deal includes naming rights for the building.
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From left: Former CBRE Group broker Jon Zuckerman, now an executive managing director at Newmark Knight Frank, CBRE brokers Mary Ann Tighe and Stephen Siegel, former CBRE tri-state President Mitchell Rudin, current president of U.S. operations for Brookfield Properties, and
Keith Caggiano, vice president at CBRE

The word on the street has always been that it’s a dog-eat-dog world in the city’s largest commercial brokerage firms, but brokers rarely reveal how the cutthroat maneuvering plays out.

But now, in a bombshell lawsuit filed this month, former CBRE Group broker Jon Zuckerman provides an inside account claiming he was forced to resign and give up his lucrative MetLife account while CBRE allegedly sought to consolidate control over his clients.

The suit only names the commercial property firm CBRE (under the name CB Richard Ellis Real Estate Services) and Zuckerman’s former partner, broker Keith Caggiano, and does not name MetLife or other CBRE executives. [more]

One of Newmark Knight Frank’s top retail brokers, Amira Yunis, has left the brokerage to join CBRE, CBRE announced today. Yunis will join the company’s Midtown Manhattan office as an executive vice president in retail services, effective next Monday.

Yunis, who has been with Newmark since 2000, served most recently as executive vice president and principal of the company, where she brokered several high-profile deals such as a Trader Joe’s lease at Union Square (the retailer’s first lease in the city) and an 8,500-square-foot space at the Fred French Building at 551 Fifth Avenue to the clothing retailer Tommy Bahama.

“Amira has steadily and intelligently built a notable retail real estate business in New York, including prime international and national brands,” said Matt Van Buren, president of the New York tri-state region at CBRE. -- Katherine Clarke [more]

News Corp. has signed a 15-year lease for the former Charles Schwab space in the southern plaza of the media company’s Rockefeller Center headquarters at 1211 Sixth Avenue, the New York Post reported, beating out Emirates Airlines, which had also been interested in the property. The company will likely build a 9,000-square-foot studio in the space, the Post said, though its exact plans were not immediately clear.

Beacon Capital, the building’s owner, had reportedly been marketing the space through Cushman & Wakefield for $525 to $625 per square foot, or $4 million a year.

Gene Spiegelman, David Tricarico and Mitch Arkin of Cushman & Wakefield represented Beacon in the deal, while News Corp. was represented by Mary Ann Tighe, Ken Rapp and Tim Dempsey of CBRE. [more]

From left: JLL New York President Peter Riguardi, 330 Madison Avenue, CBRE New York CEO Mary Ann Tighe and 200 Park Avenue

Commercial brokerages CBRE and Jones Lang LaSalle are best known for finding office space for businesses in need, but each firm is quietly moving into new spaces of its own.

The Wall Street Journal reported that after inking deals in 2010, CBRE recently moved into new offices in the Met Life Building at 200 Park Avenue and JLL will soon take up space at 330 Madison Avenue.

JLL pays about $60 for each of its 82,000 square feet, and spent $20.5 million renovating the space. [more]

Los Angeles-based CBRE Group posted the largest net income for the third quarter and Pittsburgh-based Holliday Fenoglio Fowler posted the strongest net income relative to revenue, among the six major commercial brokerage companies that report earnings publicly, an analysis of the latest quarterly results by The Real Deal shows.

Meanwhile, Midtown-based commercial service firm Cushman & Wakefield, which reported earnings today through its parent company Exor, headquartered in Turin, Italy, had net income of $9 million on revenues of $520 million in the third quarter. It was the only company (excluding Grubb & Ellis which has not yet reported for the third quarter) to report a loss for the nine months of 2011. Through September, the company shows a loss of $13.5 million on revenues of $1.4 billion. [more]

From the November issue: The Manhattan office leasing market began the year on a tear, leading executives as recently as four months ago to predict that volume could top 30 million square feet in relocation and expansion deals. Now, however, professionals — who have seen demand wane in the second half of the year — expect activity will fall far short of that.

Indeed, the fourth quarter — often a bright seasonal spot as firms try to wrap up leases before the end of the year — won’t deliver, sources say.

Leasing for 2011 is expected to reach only 25 million or 26 million square feet, barely ahead of last year’s 24 million square feet, figures from commercial firm CBRE show. The last three months of the year are not expected to help. “We are anticipating it being a slightly softer quarter than we have seen in the last three or four quarters,” Matthew Van Buren, president of CBRE’s Tri-State region, said last month at a media briefing. [more]