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]

Movie producer Joe Roth’s penthouse apartment at One Beacon Court has gone into contract, according to the New York Times. Although it’s not immediately clear what the contract price is, the four-bedroom unit at 151 East 58th Street had an asking price of $21.7 million. … [more]

Click image for larger version of chart. At right, 1540 Broadway, the Disney store’s new home (source: PropertyShark)

While retail asking rents for most of Manhattan’s shopping corridors
were flat for the fourth quarter of 2009, there were double-digit
changes in Times Square where they rose sharply and Downtown where they
plunged, a new report by commercial services firm CB Richard Ellis
shows. Asking rents rose by 20 percent in the fourth quarter in Times Square,
with the addition of new space to the market priced above the average,
pushing it up to $1,000 per square foot from $800 per foot in the
earlier quarter, the CBRE report says. One of the largest leases signed
last quarter was by Disney which took 25,145 square feet at 1540
Broadway in Times Square. The steepest decline in Manhattan in the fourth quarter was Downtown on
Broadway from Battery Park to Chambers Street, where asking rents took
a 22 percent nosedive to $183 per foot from $234 per square foot in the
prior quarter, the data shows…. [more]