From left: Henry Goldfarb and Stanley Lindenfeld of Lee & Associates, a rendering of 113 Nassau Street

A 30-story SLCE Architects-designed mixed-use project rising at the corner of Nassau and Ann streets in Lower Manhattan will be called the Lara, and offer 35,000 square feet of commercial space and 168 residential units, brokers close to the project told The Real Deal today.

Developers Anne / Nassau Realty have now begun marketing the office and retail portion of the tower — more than 30,000 feet of office and nearly 5,000 feet of retail, said Stanley Lindenfeld and Henry Goldfarb of Lee & Associates NYC, who are representing the spaces. [more]

Lower Manhattan

Four months after Hurricane Sandy devastated swaths of Lower Manhattan, the vast majority of the area below Chambers street is back in business, according to a new progress report from the Downtown Alliance, a local business improvement district.

Nearly 99 percent of Lower Manhattan’s commercial office space and residential inventory is now open. And nearly 96 percent of hotel inventory and 90 percent of retailers have reopened.  [more]

World Financial Center In preparation for Brookfield Office Properties’ $250 million renovation of the World Financial Center, Cosi Sandwich Bar and the fashion jeweler Erwin Pearl have closed, according to the development’s website. The World Financial Center, located on the Hudson River waterfront in Lower Manhattan, contains more than eight million square feet of office space. The mammoth renovation effort aims to transform the center’s retail and public space into a shopping and dining destination with a European-style marketplace and waterfront dining…. [more]

Lower Manhattan commercial real estate is rebounding steadily after Hurricane Sandy, with only 11 percent of office space remaining closed about eight weeks after the storm. Out of the 183 Class A and B buildings surveyed, only six are expected to remain out of operation through the end of the year. Most of the affected buildings were located east of Broadway…. [more]

A generator in Lower Manhattan

As a handful of buildings in Lower Manhattan continue to operate without power after Hurricane Sandy, the fumes created by the many generators powering those buildings could be making residents ill, the New York Post reported. “The street and the apartment smells. I’m coughing and short of breath,” Barry Rosenthal, a resident at 24 Beaver Street, told the Post. “It’s not right to breathe this stuff. It’s harmful.” [more]

From left: Steven Spinola and Lower Manhattan

Between 15 to 18 million square feet of Lower Manhattan commercial space remains closed five weeks after Hurricane Sandy, the New York Times reported, but there’s an added complication: phones are still disconnected.

Moreover, they can’t be repaired quickly. Under current repair timelines, Verizon won’t finish their work until May, which Mayor Bloomberg said on Tuesday during a speech was “just not acceptable.” Real Estate Board of New York President Steven Spinola said that if Verizon can get service back soon, then 95 to 98 percent of the still vacant offices can be back up and running by the beginning of next year, but that timetable depends entirely on Verizon’s repair work. [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]

4 New York Plaza

Despite the Financial District’s current state of water pumping, closed buildings and workers in Hazmat suits walking down the streets, analysts don’t think that Hurricane Sandy damage will cause tenants to pack their boxes en masse, the New York Times reported. Not only that, commercial tenants interested in setting up shop in the neighborhood won’t likely be deterred from the area over flood concerns. Brokers say it’s a good place to do business.

Similarly, Lower Manhattan residential properties remain in demand despite the storm’s impact. [more]

From left: Jonathan Miller, Gary Malin and Michelle Bourgeois

Hurricane Sandy hasn’t lessened the demand for Lower Manhattan residential properties, the New York Observer reported. Though it’s early to say what effect the storm will have on the Manhattan market as a whole and a slew of Lower Manhattan properties are still pumping out flood water from two weeks ago, showings and closings have not slowed down since Sandy passed through.

Even the day of the storm, as winds howled, Town salesperson Michelle Bourgeois helped close a deal on a Tribeca apartment — located in Zone B — for two clients. She even got both attorneys and found an open bank to finalize the deal. [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]