Graph provided by Alliance for Downtown New York

Commercial office leasing in Lower Manhattan totaled 5.86 million square feet in 2011, an 80 percent increase over 2010, according to a report by the Alliance for Downtown New York.

Thirteen of the top 20 leases for the year were for over 100,000 square feet, the Alliance said, while total office vacancy for the area ended the year at 9.5 percent, down from 9.9 percent in the second quarter of 2011 and 11.5 percent in the last quarter of 2010. Meanwhile, according to data from Cushman & Wakefield, Lower Manhattan also maintained its ranking as the business district with the third-lowest vacancy rate in the nation. [more]

Lower Manhattan’s revival is certainly not confined to development at the World Trade Center site; indeed, an array of new businesses have opened in the neighborhood in the 10 years since Sept. 11, the New York Post reported.

“[It’s] one of the greatest comeback stories in American history,” Mayor Michael Bloomberg said yesterday, addressing business, government and cultural leaders at an Association for a Better New York breakfast on Wall Street. “And I believe it will stand as our greatest monument to those we lost on Sept. 11 and to our unshakable faith in the moral imperative of protecting and preserving a free, open, democratic society,”

Bloomberg noted that the Financial District has added more residents over the last 10 years than Atlanta, Dallas and Philadelphia combined. The growing population has encouraged the development of 19 new hotels, more retail outlets than existed before the World Trade Center attacks, and schools.  [more]

Lower Manhattan is one of the fastest-growing neighborhoods in the city, the Wall Street Journal reported. Once considered a purely commercial district, abandoned come closing time, some 56,000 people now live south of Chambers Street, double the number of residents than in 2001.
“After Sept. 11, downtown became a residential community,” said Tom Goodkind, a 22-year resident of Battery Park City. “It was odd.”
Government incentives have been an important strategy for keeping residents and drawing new ones to the Financial District, Goodkind said, as well as the ever-increasing pool of career opportunities in the area.

A report produced by pro-business group the Alliance for Downtown New York shows that Lower Manhattan has recovered almost all the jobs it lost after the 2001 attacks. [more]

There are more opportunities than challenges in the current Lower
Manhattan real estate market, Mitch Rudin, the new president and CEO
of Brookfield’s U.S. commercial property holdings told GlobeSt.com.
Brookfield recently announced its $250 million redevelopment plan for
the World Financial Center. With $20 billion in public-private
investment in the area, Rudin said the neighborhood is changing beyond
just a hub for the Financial District, as the entertainment,
publishing (such as Conde Nast) and legal industry move in.
“If there is a decline in any particular industry, you are able to
position that by bringing in new,” he said. The area is now a “24-hour
environment,” he added, with its retail and residential growth, as he
noted that he thinks the World Financial Center “is going to be one
of the most exciting neighborhoods in the city.” [GlobeSt]

The Lower Manhattan Development Corporation will allocate $800,000 to turn the construction site where the Deutsche Bank building once stood into a gathering plaza for tourists visiting the Sept. 11 memorial slated to open this September, DNAinfo reported. The plaza will be in place until construction at the World Trade Center is finished, and the area fully reopens to the public. Joe Daniels, president of the National September 11 Memorial & Museum, said the plaza will alleviate traffic at the memorial’s West Street entrance and will ensure surrounding streets and sidewalks are not over-crowded. Citing its own inexperience, the LMDC is leaning on the Sept. 11 memorial foundation or the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey to build the plaza. [DNAinfo]

Source: Cassidy Turley

Manhattan office vacancy rate climbed in January, according to Cassidy Turley’s monthly market report, reaching 12.2 percent. This 20-basis-point climb, according to the report, is due in part to two major chunks of office real estate to hit the market last month: a 612,000-square-foot space formerly occupied by Pfizer at 685 Third Avenue between 43rd and 44th streets, and a 250,000-square-foot space at 1745 Broadway on the corner of 56th Street. The average asking rent, however, saw a slight month-over-month increase, reaching $48.12 per square foot from $47.66. TRD [more]

54 Bond StreetFrom the February issue: “It’s like being in the desert,” luxury broker Donna Olshan recently said
of the inventory in the high-end Downtown Manhattan market.
“There’s nothing to buy,” reiterated agent Alison Rogers of DG Neary
Realty, when the fourth-quarter Manhattan market reports were released.

The very beginning of the New Year is always a cyclical low point
for residential inventory in New York, as sellers pull their listings
from the market in the hopes of re-launching their efforts with vigor in
time for the spring buying season.
But this year’s January inventory trough was actually 5.8 percent
above its year-ago level, according to the real-time listings tracker on
UrbanDigs.com. And at press time, inventory had already risen by 6.5
percent in the three weeks since then. [more]

Downtown office vacancy chart, click image for larger version (source: Cassidy Turley)

The vacancy rate for Downtown surpassed the vacancy rate for Midtown
for the first time in nearly two years as several large blocks of
space were returned to the market in Lower Manhatt [more]

The vacancy rate Downtown rose sharply as Goldman Sachs’ former headquarters building, the 1.1 million-square-foot tower at 85 Broad Street, was officially added as available to the leasing market, commercial services firm Cassidy Turley said in its monthly Manhattan office leasing report released today (click here to see full report).

The vacancy rate Downtown rose by more than a percentage point to 12.2 percent in March from 11.1 percent in February because of the addition, the report says.

The building also drove Manhattan’s Class A vacancy rate to its highest level in 13 years, the report says, reaching 12.8 percent in March. TRD [more]

A planned Upper East Side Shake Shack outpost is raising hopes in the community that the popular burger chain could help revitalize a currently-dilapidated and abandoned plaza at 182 East 86th Street between Lexington and Third avenues. The empty plaza, which sits next to the 440-unit Park Lane Tower, has been a drag on the neighborhood, according to residents, who hope that the burger joint could do for it what it did for Madison Square Park. The chain has signed a 15-year lease for the abandoned space and plans to open the location before the year is over. The chain has launched an extensive expansion effort in recent months, with a planned Nolita location in the works and a rumored Financial District spot in the pipeline.