As city planners scramble to sell Mayor de Blasio ’s new-housing proposals to neighborhood skeptics, another crucial rezoning initiative — the one to promote new and larger office buildings in East Midtown — has slowed to a crawl.
Since a “steering committee” of “stakeholders” submitted recommendations to City Hall in October, little has been heard from the Department of City Planning about the next step in the desperately needed rezoning process.
Planning Commission Chairman Carl Weisbrod, Manhattan Borough President Gale Brewer, Council Member Dan Garodnick, and developer SL Green skilfully collaborated to deliver last year’s Vanderbilt Avenue rezoning, which made possible SLG’s new One Vanderbilt tower.
But a five-block stretch on one avenue represents a minuscule fraction of East Midtown’s 73 square blocks — which major corporations continue to leave, thanks to 55-year-old zoning rules which make it almost impossible to put up the state-of-the-art buildings that large tenants now demand.
In the latest loss to East Midtown, Boston Consulting Group, now at 430 Park Ave., will move to Related Cos.’ spectacularly successful Hudson Yards in 2016. BCG joins an ongoing exodus from the area, which includes Citigroup, Sony, Hudson’s Bay Co. and law firms Reed Smith and Jones Day.
The East Midtown steering committee’s recommendations for transit and infrastructure improvements in exchange for the right to put up larger buildings seem responsible and constructive.
But city planners must now analyze the proposals and decide how to adapt them to specific parts of East Midtown. What worked at One Vanderbilt, where SL Green is providing more than $200 million in pedestrian and transit-related upgrades, won’t work everywhere.
It all promises a long wait before any rezoning plan, even for a few blocks, can begin the public land-use review process.
How long will they wait for action before more companies give up on what was once the world’s premier office district?
The world is waiting to see what will happen at The Four Seasons restaurant space next year when new operator Major Food Group takes over.
But Seagram Building landlord Aby Rosen is wasting no time on the office-leasing front, as he fills the landmark 375 Park Ave. with firms paying astronomical rents.
Rosen’s RFR has landed 140,000 square feet of leasing activity in 2015, and the tower is now 97 percent spoken for.
In the latest deal, JBS USA Holdings Inc., the US unit of a Brazilian conglomerate, has signed for the full 29th floor with 18,214 square feet. The asking rent was in the $170s a square foot.
Halstead Commercial Division’s Tito Ghose and Dina Scheinman repped the tenant, while RFR’s AJ Camhi, with JLL’s Matt Astrachan, Jon Fanuzzi and Matt Polhemus acted for the ownership.
In another recent deal at Seagram, MDC Acquisition Partners, repped by law firm Fried Frank’s real estate chairman Jon Mechanic, leased 3,180 square feet.
Very quietly, for such a premier location, “luxury travel brand” Mosafer has checked into the former Ana Tzarev gallery space at AFP’s 24 W. 57th St.
The 13,400-square-foot lease on three levels had an annual asking rent of $3.7 million.
Qatar-based Mosafer operates 11 stores worldwide. The 57th Street location, its first in the US, will sell the full line of luggage and travel accessories. The store “soft-opened” with a limited line and will have a grand opening in the spring.
CBRE’s Amira Yunis brokered the deal for the landlord. She said the store “will look very different from what is there now” when it opens in a few months.
The owners of German beer barn Reichenbach Hall on West 37th Street are bringing what sounds like a decidely non-Teutonic cuisine to 29 W. 36th St. They have signed a lease for Habañero Blues, in 14,000 square feet on three levels in the former space of nightclub District 36.
It will open in the spring. The deal was brokered on both sides by EVO Real Estate Group’s Rob Frischman and Albert Wu. Frischman said the “ask” was about $100 a square foot on the ground level.