Women’s apparel designer Kate Spade New York is taking another 39,300 square feet at Morgan Stanley Real Estate Fund’s 2 Park Avenue, bringing its total space in the office tower to more than 135,000 square feet, The Real Deal has learned from CompStak.
Best known for its signature handbags, Kate Spade moved into the 981,000-square-foot, 29-story skyscraper two years ago and will be expanding into its new space on the 16th floor sometime in December. Its total square footage in the building, at East 33rd Street in Murray Hill, will be 135,120 square feet, according to CoStar.
Kate Spade agreed to pay in the mid-$50s per square foot for 11 years, which includes nine free months of rent, the CompStak data shows. Newmark Grubb Knight Frank’s David Falk and Jason Greenstein represented the tenant; a Cushman & Wakefield team of Tara Stacom, Whitten Morris, David Green, and Mitchell Arkin represented the landlord. Morris confirmed the deal, but declined to comment further. None of the other brokers were immediately available for comment, nor was a spokesperson for Kate Spade.
The building is anchored by online shopping website Gilt Groupe and law firm Herrick, Feinstein. In 2007, a joint venture between L&L Holding Company and an affiliate of General Electric Pension Trust sold the property to Morgan Stanley Real Estate Fund for $519 million.
Morgan Stanley, whose holdings include 1585 Broadway and 522 Fifth Avenue, is revving up to raise up to $3 billion for a global property fund, the Wall Street Journal reported. The move represents one of the first efforts by a major bank to find its fundraising voice after being shouted down by private equity giants such as Starwood Capital Group and Blackstone Group since the downturn.