Durst signs trading firm to full floor at One Five One

Chicago Trading Company takes 68K sf in move from 1129 Sixth Avenue

Durst Organization chairman Douglas Durst with 151 West 42nd Street in Manhattan, NYC (Loopnet, Durst.org)
Durst Organization chairman Douglas Durst with 151 West 42nd Street in Manhattan, NYC (Loopnet, Durst.org)

The Durst Organization is done leasing full-floor office space at One Five One — for now.

Douglas Durst’s firm signed the Chicago Trading Company to a 68,000-square-foot lease at the Times Square tower, the New York Post reported. The trading firm is taking the floors 36 and 37 in the 52-story building, formerly known as Four Times Square.

The lease eliminates the last full-floor office availability at the 1.7 million-square-foot property, formerly known as the Condé Nast Building. The asking rent for the space was $110 per square foot. The length of the lease was not clear.

CTC is moving on from 1129 Sixth Avenue, where it leased 10,000 square feet. The lease comes after Durst poured $150 million into capital improvements for its building, including a lobby redesign and the creation of a 45,000-square-foot amenity floor, spurred by the departure of Condé Nast for One World Trade Center.

A CBRE team including Ben Friedland and Jason Pollen represented CTC. Durst was represented in-house by a team including Tom Bow and Rocco Romeo.

One Five One, located at 151 West 42nd Street, has scored a number of tenants in recent months.

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Washington, D.C.-based law firm Venable LLP in October signed a 15-year lease for 158,000 square feet. The asking rent for the space, which included 11,000 square feet of concourse space, ranged from $100 to $135 per square foot. Venable expects to move in during the second half of this year.

Video-sharing app TikTok made waves when it signed a lease for 232,000 square feet in May 2020, marking the first six-digit office lease in Manhattan since the start of the pandemic. The office is the home of TikTok’s U.S. headquarters.

Other major tenants include BMO and Nasdaq.

Durst’s successes at One Five One may be the envy of the Manhattan office market, which continues to struggle. Leasing volume fell 3.9 percent in the second quarter to 7.3 million square feet of office space, according to a quarterly report from Colliers.

The vacancy rate in Manhattan for the second quarter was 17.2 percent, a slight improvement from the previous quarter, but up year-over-year and mere percentage points off from February’s record 17.4 percent vacancy rate.

[NYP] — Holden Walter-Warner