240 West 40th Street

Fashion label Donna Karan New York’s headquarters space hit the block with a $65 million asking price, Crain’s reported. Located at 240 West 40th Street between Seventh and Eighth avenues, the 150,000-square-foot property is being marketed by Richard Baxter, Scott Latham and Glenn Tolchin of Jones Lang LaSalle.

There is a hitch, however: DKNY’s lease expires in 2016, and there’s no word on whether the company would stay or not. A DKNY spokesperson did not respond to Crain’s request for comment. An unnamed source told Crain’s that DKNY might be reluctant to move after investing in its office and showroom spaces. [more]

From left: Bruce Mosler of Cushman & Wakefield, Ron Cohen, Stephen Siegel and Joseph Moinian (credit: Marc Becker)

Ron Cohen, vice chairman of Capital Markets New York at Jones Lang LaSalle, was honored last night at the 30th annual gala benefiting the American Friends of Rabin Medical Center. Proceeds from the event, dubbed “The Best of New York Meets the Best of Israel,” will benefit the future Emergency and Trauma Center at Rabin Medical Center in Israel.

Cohen is also a founder and executive board member of the AFRMC…. [more]

Lower Manhattan

More than one-fifth of office space below Canal Street remains closed in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, according to a tally released today by Jones Lang LaSalle research. Out of 183 Class A and Class B buildings, 25 are shuttered three weeks on. Thus, some 20.7 million square feet of office space downtown are closed to tenants.

Total inventory of Lower Manhattan Class A and Class B office properties totals 101.2 million square feet. [more]

From left: signs at 4 New York Plaza, 1 New York Plaza and 120 Wall Street, respectively

Many of Lower Manhattan’s large commercial landlords have been reluctant to provide information on how their properties fared in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy, but recent assessments by city inspectors provide a limited window into the damage.

Over the past week, officials from the city’s Department of Buildings and other agencies catalogued the impact of Sandy on properties within the city’s evacuation zone A. These assessments will determine which buildings can be reopened. [more]

Manhattan Offices

Thanks to the reduction in office rents following the real estate crash, the price of leasing a Manhattan office has not kept pace with inflation, according to a Jones Lang LaSalle report cited by the Wall Street Journal.

The average Manhattan office rent in 2012 is $55 per square-foot, up 22 percent from 2002, when the average rent was $45 per foot. However, had lease prices kept pace with inflation, they would be averaging approximately $60 per foot this year, according to JLL. [more]

From left: 1120 Sixth Avenue, Cushman & Wakefield’s John Cefaly and Jones Lang LaSalle’s Matthew Astrachan

Clothing retailer Perry Ellis International has inked a lease for 96,350 square feet at Edison Properties’ 1120 Sixth Avenue, the New York Post reported.

The lease is for 40,000 square feet of direct lease space and nearly 60,000 square feet of space sublet from Huron Consulting, which will convert to a direct lease after several years, the Post said. The tower, between 43rd and 44th streets, is also known as the Hippodrome building. The lease is one of the larger transactions of the year so far, the Post noted, especially given that the tenant is not a finance, insurance, real estate or legal firm. [more]

The global economic outlook has weakened, as doubts surrounding the Euro-zone debt crisis have re-emerged, said the Global Market Perspective report for the third quarter from Jones Lang LaSalle, released yesterday. Gross domestic product growth in 2012 is now projected to be 2 percent in the U.S., down from a predicted 2.2 percent growth in April.

Sales and leaseback activity have increased, as corporations look to free up capital, and capital markets have improved, but leasing in most developed countries has slowed, the report shows. Gross leasing volumes worldwide for 2012 are projected to be 10 percent lower than those of 2011. The global office vacancy rate is now 13.3 percent, down from 14 percent in the second quarter of 2011 — the lowest since the bottom of the post-Lehman market — and speculative development remains low in most developed markets, the report says. [more]

A rendering of 10 Norden Place

Cervalis, an information technology services company based in Shelton, Conn., has signed a 168,000-square-foot lease for a build-to-suit, Class A office space in Norwalk, Conn., according to the tenant’s broker, Jones Lang LaSalle.

The deal, the largest in Fairfield County this year to date, is for a “data and disaster recovery center” at 10 Norden Place, which will be constructed “as soon as possible,” according to JLL’s John Stoddard, who brokered the lease on behalf of Cervalis with Howard Greenberg of Howard Properties. [more]

From left: Aby Rosen and 350 Madison Avenue

RFR Holdings’ Aby Rosen is weighing a $350 million purchase of 350 Madison Avenue, according to the New York Post. The 25-story, 394,000-square-foot building, between East 44th and East 45th streets, is owned by Kenisco Properties and is being marketed by Jones Lang LaSalle’s Richard Baxter, Ron Cohen, Scott Latham and John Caplan. [more]

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The Midtown-based investment banking firm Eastdil Secured brokered nearly twice the dollar volume of Manhattan’s large property transactions as its nearest rival, a review of dozens of transactions over $50 million shows.

During the first six months of the year, Eastdil Secured, a division of the California lender Wells Fargo, was the broker on 11 deals valued at a total of $1.9 billion, The Real Deal’s analysis shows. Its chief rival, the CBRE Group, completed $1 billion through six sales. … [more]