From left: Aby Rosen and Michael Fuchs of RFR Holding

Aby Rosen and Michael Fuchs’ RFR Holding is marketing a development site between West 44th and West 43rd streets, Crain’s reported, which could accommodate construction of a building as big as 355,000 square feet.

Sources told Crain’s that the site, on which there are currently three buildings, could command a hefty price tag — $500 per buildable square foot, going by a recent $400-a-square-foot asking price of a nearby site: a 12,000-square-foot plot at 20 West 40th Street, across from Bryant Park. Jones Lang LaSalle Capital Markets Group brokers are marketing the site.

Meanwhile, RFR is still trying to sell a 59 percent stake in the Seagram building at 375 Park Avenue. Sources told Crain’s that investors have been balking at the $700 million price tag for the Seagram building stake. [Crain's] [more]

Rendering of esplanade plan

Local officials are seeking input from East Side residents on plans to develop new public park space along the East River as part of a land swap deal with the United Nations, DNAinfo reported. Last week, Gov. Andrew Cuomo signed off on a new law that would allow the U.N. to build a new office tower on the site of Robert Moses Playground, on First Avenue between 41st and 42nd streets, in exchange for improvements along the East River esplanade. [more]

Rupert Murdoch and 1211 Sixth Ave.

From the April issue: The 44-story tower at 1211 Sixth Avenue, home to Rupert Murdoch’s global media company News Corporation, is getting a major new tenant. Axis Re, a division of Axis Capital, the large Bermuda-based reinsurance company, signed a lease to move to 121,019 square feet on floors 24 through 26, data from CoStar Group shows. The asking rent for the three floors at the 1.8 million-square-foot tower, which is located between 47th and 48th streets, was $65 per square foot, leasing data website MrOfficeSpace.com shows. That price was a bit above the overall asking rent in Midtown, which in February was $57.97 per square foot, CBRE figures show. Click here to see the commercial market report in the April issue for more on the latest office trends.

Source: Cassidy Turley
The vacancy rate in Midtown Manhattan rose in February for the second month in a row, marking the first time since the middle of 2009 that the rate increased in back-to-back months, data from commercial services firm Cassidy Turley shows. The uptick to 12.3 percent was fueled in February by several large blocks of space coming on the market, including floors to be given up by accounting firm Deloitte at Paramount Group’s 1633 Broadway when the company moves to 30 Rockefeller Center. The uptick broke from the general pattern seen over the past year, in which vacancy rates have steadily fallen as the economy improved. [more]

Investment firm BHR Capital has signed a five-year lease for 8,800 square feet of office space at 545 Madison Avenue, according to the Observer. The new lease now puts the 140,000-square-foot building on the corner of 55th Street at 50 percent occupied. Although it wasn’t clear how much BHR is paying in rent, landlord LCOR said that rents at the building are now in the mid-to-upper-$70s. [more]

When the office leasing market began to collapse more than two years ago, Midtown
Class A landlords fearful of putting out the wrong price in the volatile market pulled back
from listing their asking rents. Now with the leasing market returning to approximately normal volumes spurred by
sharply reduced prices, more Class A property owners in Midtown are confident enough
to list their asking rents, Robert Sammons, vice president for research at commercial
services firm Cassidy Turley, said. The firm’s December office report released Monday shows why they are getting more
self-assured. The vacancy rate for Midtown Class A space fell to 10.9 percent in
December, down from 13.9 percent one year earlier, and asking rents were $65.29 per
square foot, up from a recent low of $63.87 per foot in September. (See the full report
after the jump.) [more]

Office tenants in Midtown leased more space in November than in any month since the middle of 2006 as new office leasing rang in at double the monthly average, a new report covering all firms’ deals released today by commercial firm CB Richard Ellis shows.

“The month’s robust leasing activity — the largest single-month total since June 2006 — was achieved by deals of all sizes across the entire market,” the Midtown report says.

Tenants struck relocation or expansion deals for more than 2.4 million square feet in Midtown, compared with 1.2 million square feet the month before. TRD [more]

Ugg Australia has opened a new outpost at 600 Madison Avenue on the corner of 58th Street. The retailer, best known for its ubiquitous, calf-high suede shearling boots, currently has two other New York City locations — one in Soho at 79 Mercer Street and one on the Upper West Side at 160 Columbus Avenue. [NBC]

[more]

Yet landlords eager to sign tenants despite low rents

CBRE’s Michael Geoghegan and Bradley Gerla

As average asking rents in Midtown remain depressed at rates last reached in 2006, some financial and legal services firms are expanding on a level not s [more]

Overall asking rent for Manhattan office space climbed slightly to $47.73 per square foot in August, from $47.57 per square foot in July, according to CB Richard Ellis’ latest market report. The vacancy rate in Manhattan also showed modest improvement, dropping gradually month-over-month to 13.4 percent, from 13.7 percent. Compared to August 2009, vacancy was down .5 percent. Of the borough’s prime office neighborhoods, the Downtown market struggled the most, showing its slowest leasing momentum since September 2009, as the vacancy rate remained steady at 14.3 percent. Midtown, however, showed promise: 10.55 million square feet has been leased so far this year, up 56 percent from the same time period last year. TRD

[more]