Real estate asset manager doubling space in move to 1166 Sixth Avenue

A real estate asset manager isn’t being swayed by the murky picture of Manhattan’s office market, instead inking a deal to nearly double its space.

Cohen & Steers signed a lease for 161,000 square feet at 1166 Sixth Avenue, a person with knowledge of the deal told the Commercial Observer. The lease is for 15 years and the asking rent was $87 per square foot.

The building’s ownership structure is complex, but the two floors being leased by the asset manager are owned by Marsh McLennan; the other part of the building is owned by Minskoff Equities.

The company is moving from SL Green and Vornado Realty Trust’s 280 Park Avenue, where it has occupied 87,000 square feet for the past decade. Cohen & Steers has long held SL Green stock.

While the non-Park Avenue space sits farther from Grand Central Terminal, the move allows Cohen & Steers to increase its office footprint by roughly 74,000 square feet. It may also allow the company to save on price per square foot, although the asking rent at 280 Park Avenue couldn’t immediately be determined.

A CBRE team including Michael Geoghegan and Michael Wellen represented the tenant, while a Newmark team including David Falk and Andrew Sachs represented the landlord.

Cohen & Steers is set to move into its new digs in the fourth quarter of next year.

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Amid hybrid work arrangements, companies have made headlines by looking to downsize or sublet their space. Despite the anecdotal evidence, Colliers data show Manhattan is actually coming off its busiest month since the start of the pandemic. Approximately 3.4 million square feet of office space was leased last month, the most since January 2020.

Space is becoming harder to find in Midtown, specifically, where the Sixth Avenue office is located. August marked the sixth consecutive month of newly leased space exceeding newly available space in the central business district.

Nevertheless, the available office space in Midtown has increased by 36 percent since March 2020, though that’s much better than Manhattan’s 67 percent increase in the same timeframe. The average annual rent per square foot in Midtown last month was $79.55.

— Holden Walter-Warner