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

• Tweet

Commercial brokers experiencing the worst real estate environment in a
generation got a breakfast pep talk from leading executives at a real
estate panel today but heard divergent views on when the market will
hit bottom. Matt VanBuren, senior managing director at full service commercial firm
CB Richard Ellis, provided a relatively optimistic viewpoint, holding
that the city is near the bottom of the downward cycle. “Our perspective is that we are at an inflection point, and that the
majority of the downward price movement has occurred,” he said, adding
that the overall health of financial and legal firms remained critical
to a recovery. [more]