A juicy set of office moves are teeing up at 245 Park Ave., where JPMorgan Chase is apparently going to vacate its nearly 600,000 square feet.
The bank’s goal, “tellers” say, is to consolidate at the 1.76 million square foot 277 Park Ave. where it already rents over 725,000 feet and has had many of its own floors up for sublease. There are also several contiguous floors available if the bank needs to fill in further.
Chase is being represented by a CB Richard Ellis team, which had no comment.
The opening at 245 Park is creating an opportunistic play for tenant Société Générale, which appears to be landing in some 400,000 feet of the Chase space. The space had 10 years left on its lease.
While some sources say the sublease is close to being signed, SocGen could still renew its current lease for 10 floors totaling 536,600 feet at 1221 Ave. of the Americas.
Pat Murphy and Ken Meyerson at CB Richard Ellis have been working for SocGen and also declined comment through a CBRE spokesman.
SocGen’s former rogue trader, Jerome Kerviel, is now on trial in Paris for allegedly making 50 billion euros ($61.4 billion) in unauthorized trades in 2008, costing the bank over 5 billion euros as it unwound the positions while the market tanked.
In 2005, the French banking giant had hoped to move to 500,000 feet at 1095 Avenue of the Americas but its partner and current building owner, the Rockefeller Group Development, didn’t top the bid made by Sam Zell‘s Equity Office.
RGD declined to comment on current SocGen negotiations.
The 245 Park Ave. building is owned by Brookfield Properties while 277 Park Ave. is a Stahl property represented by Cassidy Turley.
None of the parties returned calls for comment prior to press time.
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We finally got the payoff dirt on the three-tower Macklowe sale to Equity Residential.
It took some doing because no deeds were filed on the last two buildings. As we reported here, the elegant Rivertower closed in February for $181.5 million.
Then in April, 777 Sixth Avenue transferred in a transaction valued at $150.8 million while Longacre House at 831 Eighth Ave. at West 50th Street garnered $142.7 million for the Macklowes.
An Equity spokesman said no deeds were filed because the buildings were owned by partnerships and they bought the companies that owned the partnership. Rivertower was owned by many partnerships but a deed was filed.
Sometimes when a Real Estate Investment Trust like Equity Residential buys a building, the former owners take stock in the REIT in partial payment. This also happened here once Macklowe paid off the building mortgages. “It was mostly cash but there was a very small amount of stock,” confirmed the Equity spokesperson.
A Macklowe spokesman declined to comment on their “investment” with Sam Zell.
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A soon-to-be-empty City Hall-area “B” building is joining the sudden slew of sales offerings. The 165,000 square foot office building at 93 Worth Street on the northwest corner of Broadway is “ripe” for conversion.
Known also as 335 Broadway, it is currently 86 percent occupied with its largest tenant, the City’s Dept. of Health & Mental Hygiene, relocating next July to the Tishman Speyer Properties’ building under development in Long Island City.
The Grubb & Ellis team of Jon Epstein, Charles Kingsley, Vin Carrega and Jason Meister — lawyer Steven Meister‘s offspring — are marketing the building with a price tag of $50 million — translating to about $300 a square foot.
“It’s set to go with great light and air so we are pretty confident [in the pricing],” said Epstein.
Documents show the 1924-era building was mortgaged in 2005 for $26.25 million. The seller, World-Wide Holdings, bought it in 1998 as a future conversion target but is now looking to deploy funds to other projects.
There is 200 feet of frontage along Worth Street. The retail tenant, Strawberry’s has a long-term lease.
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Jeremy Mindich‘s Scopia Capital is cozying up to the big time at Carnegie Hall Tower. The $90-a-foot space on the entire 33rd floor of 22,291 feet was just subleased from Stone Tower Capital. Scopia is moving up from 450 Seventh Ave. in the Fashion District and Erik Schmall of Studley represented the fund in their search.
In the same 60-story W. 57th Street tower, Kingdon Capital renewed a 41,500 feet spread on floors 47 through 51 that had an asking rent of $100.
Kingdon was repped by Paul Revson at Studley along with Chris Kraus at Jones Lang LaSalle.
The TF Cornerstone-owned building was represented by Matt Leon and Billy Cohen of Newmark Knight Frank.
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The public relations service, Business Wire, has renewed its lease for 31,902 square feet at 40 E. 52nd St. for 10 years.
The tenant, which holds down the 13th and 14th floors of the Rudin-owned building, was represented by Paul Myers of CB Richard Ellis. Robert Steinman and Thomas Keating of Rudin Management worked in-house on the deal.
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To get 45,000 feet of developable air rights for its new West 57th Street tower, Extell paid the Cavalry Baptist Church $28.6 million and agreed to provide development services worth $2.5 million within seven years.
“I’m not surpised,” said Robert Knakal of Massey Knakal who sold a small W. 57th Street building for Extell after it was stripped of its air rights for the same tower.
“Here, in exchange for the air rights, the church needed some work on the building and who better to oversee it than an accomplished developer?” he said.[email protected]