To look out the windows from the 10th floor of Larry Silverstein’s shiny new 7 World Trade Center is to take visual stock of how far Lower Manhattan has come since Sept. 11, 2001. There’s the already-skyscraping 1 World Trade Center to the right, Towers 3 and 4 rising to the left, the soon-to-open memorial plaza below, and the new W Downtown staring back from across the construction site. A few blocks to both the east and west, Lower Manhattan now houses more residents than it has ever before seen, and still more are moving in — in droves. And soon, of course, Condé Nast will arrive, and with it, as is presumed to be the case, so will the neighborhood.

So this morning, when some of the most important architects of this turnaround convened to celebrate “The New Downtown,” alongside the NYU Schack Institute of Real Estate and Silverstein Properties, there was a natural, and deserved, optimism in their voices (see photos above). But there was also an unmistakable air of exasperation, as if to say, what else can we possibly do to get major retailers and restaurateurs to take notice? [more]

Nearly a month after Condé Nast formally agreed to lease about 1 million square feet in 1 World Trade Center, brokerage firms are mulling over what impact the publisher’s move from Midtown will have on the Downtown market.

One commercial brokerage firm, Cassidy Turley, is taking a close look at which companies have a tight relationship with the media giant to see if they might transfer their offices to Lower Manhattan to remain close by, and hire Cassidy Turley to assist them.

The impact from Condé Nast’s move downtown “can’t be overestimated,” Robert Sammons, Cassidy Turley’s vice president of research, said. Comments

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From the June issue: The agreement by publisher Condé Nast to lease 1 million square feet at One World Trade Center underscored a trend of companies willing to move away from their traditional core locations in Midtown. “Tenants are being more open about where they are located, which is refreshing,” David Goldstein, an executive vice president at commercial advisory firm Studley, said. “It is terrific to bring a creative use into an area that is traditionally dominated by financial services, legal services, insurance companies and the like.”
That openness facilitates another long-term trend. With development opportunities tight in the center of Midtown, over the years, builders have been constructing towers farther west and south, a study by commercial firm CB Richard Ellis shows. [more]

“One World Trade Center is now New York’s first address for premier corporate office tenants,” Port Authority of New York & New Jersey Executive Director Chris Ward declared today as he took the stage on the 34th floor of the yet-to-be-finished Freedom Tower to announce Conde Nast’s signing for one million square feet in the building (see photos above). “Already the announcement has generated new interest in 1 World Trade, and let me tell you, the word is now out: See you Downtown.”

Symbolic as today’s signing might be of a transforming neighborhood, many in the real estate industry say the landscape has been changing for a while now. [more]

Conde Nast finalized its lease of one million square feet of office space at 1 World Trade Center, guaranteeing the 1,776-foot tall tower an anchor tenant. According to the New York Times, Conde Nast’s annual rent for the 20th through 41st floors in the building will start in 2014 at a little more than $60 per square foot, about equal to what it currently pays at 4 Times Square. Over the course of the 25-year lease the publisher will pay the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey, which owns the site, $2 billion. But the Port Authority offered several incentives — including agreeing to pay the rent between 2014 and 2019 on Conde Nast’s current lease, offering tax exemptions on interior furnishings, and promising $46 million in rent rebates over 17 years — to land the media giant. Comments

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The former ESPN Zone retail space at the Durst Organization’s 4 Times Square — the Conde Nast building, at least for a few more years — is back on the market for the first time since 1998. According to the Observer, the Dursts have already begun showing the 45,000-square-foot space, at 42nd Street and Broadway, to prospective tenants, though they plan to formally launch it at the ICSC retail trade show in Las Vegas next month. Since ESPN Zone shuttered last spring, Disney has been using the space, which contains three full floors and 185 feet of street frontage. [more]

Sirius XM Radio is setting its sights on SL Green’s 100 Church Street, potentially making it the latest in a string of Midtown media companies decamping to Lower Manhattan (see also: Conde Nast, the Daily News, National Enquirer parent company American Media). According to the Observer, Sirius is looking to take more than 250,000 square feet of office space at the building, or 180,000 square feet of contiguous space, though it’s not a done deal just yet. A major new tenant like Sirius would be a boon for SL Green, which purchased 100 Church Street, once derided as the emptiest building in Manhattan, from the Sapir Organization last January. [more]

Publishing giant Conde Nast is likely to finalize its 1 million-square-foot lease at One World Trade Center by March, developer Douglas Durst told Crain’s today. The Durst Organization has a deal with the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey to buy a $100 million stake in the tower, and scored a major coup last year when the magazine behemoth agreed to relocate from 4 Times Square, which Durst also owns. The only tenant to actually sign a lease at the 2.6 million-square-foot project thus far is China’s Vantone Industrial, but Durst said two government agencies are also in negotiations to lease a combined 1 million square feet. [more]

From the December issue: It’s the home of major media companies such as Viacom, the New York Times, Condé Nast, Reuters, Bertelsmann and Universal Music Group; broadcast studios for ABC, MTV, NASDAQ and others; headquarters of Morgan Stanley and law firms such as Proskauer Rose, Skadden Arps and Cravath Swaine & Moore. One-quarter of all hotels in Manhattan are there, along with Broadway theaters and some of the best retail in the world. And, oh, tens of millions of visitors annually come by.

So before the world’s eyes turn to Times Square for New Year’s Eve, it seemed like a good time to consider the state of the office market in the city’s most famous district. After all, some 200,000 people work in Times Square, 70 percent of them in finance and creative fields.

Let’s use the Times Square Alliance’s borders for the district: 40th Street to 53rd Street between Sixth and Eighth avenues, as well as Restaurant Row (46th Street between Eighth and Ninth avenues). [more]

Mary Ann Tighe and Stephen Siegel of CBRE and 1 WTC

The New York Police Department has issued a secret request for proposals to environmental consulting firms to look at the effects of proposed security measures at the rebuilt World Trade Center. According to the Post, those involved with the project are worried that prospective tenants will be scared away, rather than comforted, by the move. Meanwhile, Larry Silverstein has reportedly tapped a CB Richard Ellis team led by Mary Ann Tighe and Stephen Siegel to market the already-rising 4 World Trade Center and the planned 3 World Trade Center and will announce the start of their leasing efforts next year. [more]