THE W&H Properties’ partnership that controls the “Pre-war Trophy” 60 E. 42nd St. has officially just changed its name and address to One Grand Central Place.
The Post Office will even deliver mail to that address at its own ZIP code: 10165.
“It’s not your grandfather’s Lincoln Building anymore,” quipped Billy Cohen, executive vice president and principal of Newmark Knight Frank, the property’s leasing agent who came up with the new marketing moniker. “We jack-hammered the old one off and put up the other one at midnight on Sunday.”
Cohen says the 1.3 million foot, 55-story office building, with its own entrance to Grand Central Terminal, is now a “state-of-the-art business environment with uber pre-builts” that have high-end hardware and designer-window treatments.
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The Muppets are taking off from Manhattan.
After an exhaustive search in the city and New Jersey, Muppet makers at the Jim Henson Co. are relocating from their SoHo digs at 627 Broadway to 37-18 Northern Blvd. in Long Island City.
The so-called Creature Shop, which designs and constructs all the Muppets, including Big Bird, Elmo and Kermit the Frog for the worldwide TV shows, will move into a 12,000-foot light-filled space on the fourth floor of the renovated manufacturing building.
In a sale and partial leaseback of the 300,000-foot building, Ashish Dua and Jeff Rosenblum of Acumen Capital Partners bought the former Standard Motor Products Building last year for $40.6 million and made upgrades that included some new windows.
According to broker Jim DeLuca of Cushman & Wakefield, Industrial Development Agency, incentives were key to the deal as they lopped $6 a foot off the low-$20s a foot rent.
In Manhattan, their renewal was proposed at $50 last summer but fell to $35 by the last offer.
“I really thought they would renew because it was easier,” said DeLuca.
But the incentives, plus a giant freight elevator and a two-block stroll to Kaufman Astoria Studios where Sesame Street is filmed, helped to seal the seven-year deal.
“This will be far more efficient and conducive to what they do — plus they are saving a lot of money,” said DeLuca, who worked directly with the Acumen duo.
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Hartmarx did not leave its Hickey-Freeman retail space at 666 Fifth Ave. empty-handed.
Public records show the bankrupt retailer was handed $11.8 million for its portion of the commercial condo unit by 666 Fifth Ave. Retail Associates — the partnership of Kushner Cos., Stanley Chera‘s Crown Acquisitions and the Carlyle Group that bought the retail portion for $525 million last year.
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Suzanne Sunshine has left CB Richard Ellis and formed Sunshine & Associates to provide commercial as well as residential brokerage and consulting to her specialty niche: nonprofit organizations and the people associated with them.
Sunshine said she will donate a percentage of her fees back to each organization.
“At the age of 45 — and the same age when my mother, Louise Sunshine left Donald Trump to form her own company — I’ve decided it’s a good time to go out on my own with a creative, new model that really is applicable to today’s economic times and hardships,” said Sunshine.
“The nonprofit sector remains a strong em ployer.”
According to an other of her former employers, Cush man & Wakefield, the education, health care, nonprofits and government sectors account for 15.2 percent of all leasing in the city.
In her last deal for CBRE, Sunshine represented the Associated Medical Schools of New York in a five-year lease for 3,300 feet at 1270 Sixth Ave.
The low-$50s a foot deal was made with Heather Kahn, who worked in-house for the Tishman Speyer Properties’ ownership. [email protected]
