A human services organization has inked a 15-year lease at Abraham Leser’s 111 Livingston Street.
It’s a big win for the landlord, whose tenants at the Downtown Brooklyn office building once went on rent strike and sued over poor conditions. Rising Ground is moving more than 125 employees from its current Brooklyn location at 151 Lawrence Street.
The nonprofit, which provides therapeutic treatments and support to families in New York City and Westchester County, is taking 27,000 square feet on the 19th and 20th floors. One of the floors was occupied by Brooklyn Law School, which filed suit in May 2021 citing open safety violations tied to the building’s elevators and a faulty HVAC system.
Another tenant, Legal Aid Society, served Leser with a notice to terminate its lease in June 2022 and complained of “white, bluish and gray fuzzy circular mold colonies.” The case was eventually settled and the tenant returned, according to Crain’s.
“Fortunately, they were able to give us reports that show that all that had been remediated,” OPEN Impact Real Estate broker Stephen Powers said. “The building has received a recent major renovation during Covid.”
Asking rents in the 1969 building, once the premier office building in the borough, are in the upper $40s per square foot. The landlord will install a new, custom-designed space for the nonprofit’s new Brooklyn hub, where it will have offices and serve children and adults. OPEN’s Powers, Alexander Smith and Kendall Elliott represented the tenant.
The landlord, who was represented in-house, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
“It’s set up for high traffic,” Powers said of the building. “There are multiple areas, two elevator bays, there are dedicated entrances for different large tenants in this building, so it really aligns well for a program-facing nonprofit.”
Smith said the tenant toured some of the newer buildings in the borough but they were too expensive.
“We looked everywhere,” Smith said. “There’s definitely a lot of vacancy. Some of that newer product it’s class A new construction, so with the higher cost of land and construction, they’re expecting higher rental rates.”
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Rising Ground also has a 30,000-square-foot administrative headquarters at 1333 Broadway and 143 locations.
“This new space will allow us to continue to help Brooklyn children, adults, and families rise above adversity and find positive paths forward,” Rising Ground COO Lissa Southerland said.