A closing Borders
Online shopping, steep Manhattan rents and tight margins are changing the face of New York City’s big-box retail chains, according to the Wall Street Journal. Now that Borders is gone and with Circuit City, Best Buy and Barnes & Noble scaling back, landlords are readapting their buildings for smaller tenants. [more]
The prewar office tower at 315 Park Avenue South is up for grabs with owner Craig Nassi seeking either a buyer or a joint venture partner to recapitalize the property for roughly $350 million. According to the Post, Nassi, of BCN Development, has tapped the Carlton Group to market the building, which has a Staples store in the retail portion and is also home to Credit Suisse, at around $1,000 per square foot. [more]
Office supply retailer Staples signed a 17,500-square-foot lease in the HSBC building owned by Midtown Equities and the Israel-based IDB Group, at the corner of Fifth Avenue and 39th Street. The retailer took 6,000 square feet of ground-floor space and 11,500 square feet of mezzanine space, in the lease at 442 Fifth Avenue that was signed during the first week in February, a source familiar with the deal said. The landlord had been asking $2.2 million for the entire space, or about $125 per square foot blended, the source said. [more]
It’s a month into 2010 and a couple of New Jersey savings banks and local credit unions are helping real estate investors in the New York metro area secure much needed financing for commercial real estate. Robert Familant, CEO and treasurer of Progressive Credit Union, which has assets of over $500 million, said that credit unions are increasingly venturing into the business loan market, primarily secured by real property. In 2009, Progressive participated in financing the first dormitory for a private developer less than two blocks from the Brooklyn College; the construction of a condominium on Park Avenue in Manhattan and a number of Brooklyn gasoline stations. New York state credit unions are active and willing to provide financing, yet they are limited to the amount of financing they can provide due to government regulations. Lobbyists for credit unions are pressing Washington to lift the lending cap for commercial business. Credit unions now can only lend 12.5 percent of their assets to businesses. They are lobbying Congress to lift the cap to 25 percent of assets. Short Hills, NJ-based Investors Savings Bank is now providing lending for commercial real estate in the tri-state region. The bank, in business since 1926, has over $8.0 billion in assets and a network of over 58 branches in the Garden State. [more]
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Shuttered stores on Broadway and West Broadway in Soho mean very different things, retail brokers say. On Broadway, between Canal and Houston streets, most of the shuttered
stores are currently being renovated and new tenants are moving in,
while on the same stretch of five blocks on West Broadway, the closed
stores are seeing little activity. Retail brokers say Broadway has had several new deals in the past few months. In addition to Escada taking Ann Taylor’s space at 560 Broadway and Bebe leasing the former Staples space
at 488 Broadway, a Spanish apparel company recently signed to take over
Kira Plastinina’s store at 594 Broadway. And off the avenue on Prince
Street, a menswear designer just signed for a space, according to Karen
Bellantoni, an executive vice president at Robert K. Futterman & Associates. [more]
