To complete one of the larger deals of the year, the stealthy lawyers at Willkie Farr & Gallagher invoked two five-year renewal options for 355,118 square feet at 787 Seventh Avenue.
The just-signed renewal, which keeps them in the space through most of 2027, doesn’t even kick in until their current lease expires at the end of August 2017. As most tenants of this size begin conducting space searches two- to five-years ahead of their renewal date, Willkie’s deal was negotiated without ever coming close to the “tenants in the market” radar.
Craig Reicher, the CB Richard Ellis vice president who led the brokerage team for the law firm, had actually been the attorney who worked on the original deal in the 1990s.
“There were certain things that were special [in the lease] and we always kept track,” Reicher said. “This was a good time for them to exercise the renewal.”
The CBRE tenant team also included Scott Gamber and Zack Freeman.
On the other side, the CBRE team of Bob Alexander, Howard Fiddle, Joan Meixner and Brad Needleman represented owner AXA Equitable.
Willkie has space on the concourse, the second and 34th floors, and also has a block of floors from 37 to 46.
Currently, the renewals encompass the exact same space, Reicher said, but options allow for further expansion.
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A new Brooks Brothers store on the Upper East Side will include its new boys and girls concepts along with offerings for the parents.
The retailer has just leased the former Bolton’s space at 1180 Madison Ave. at East 86th Street, a company spokesman confirmed to us.
The store includes 2,865 square feet at street level space along with a storage basement of 1,875 square feet. The asking rent was $250 per foot based on the ground floor.
Frank DiMucci of DiMucci Partners represented Brooks Brothers in negotiating the long-term lease. The building was repped by Beth Rosen, Karen Bellantoni and Robert K. Futterman of the latter’s eponymous retail firm.
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Vornado Realty Trust is finally officially offering the former Planet Hollywood space at 1540 Broadway in a splashy brochure entitled: “THE [sic] Corner at the Bowtie.”
Sherri White, Vornado’s in-house retail guru, began e-mailing a flyer to retail brokers last week that has no asking rent and offers up both one- and two-tenant alternatives.
“They may get $1,000 [for the ground] and $100 or $200 for the upper floors,” advised one broker on condition of anonymity. “This is one of the key areas of New York where retailers have to come in.”
The flyer we examined shows the largest option provides for an entrée of 3,810 square feet on the ground floor. This would include the second story of 20,643 square feet, which has a soaring atrium piercing a third floor, which totals 12,480 square feet.
The other option divides part of the ground floor into a 1,446 square foot entrance that could be combined with a mezzanine of 2,028 square feet. This would leave the larger store with 2,364 square feet on the ground and the full second and third floors.
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Now that Joseph Cayre and his Israeli partners have closed on the HSBC building at 452 Fifth Ave., CB Richard Ellis has taken over the leasing.
First, they scrapped a recent retail deal with a watchmaker for a small store on Fifth Avenue.
The space is now being combined with a larger swath along 39th Street and will be put back up for rent. The office space is also being reconfigured.
While it’s not being actively marketed now, 200,000 to 300,000 square feet will be ready to lease to new tenants for offices in the next year, CBRE’s Reicher said.
