THERE may be no free lunch, but if you go to DUMBO there’s free rent.
Many commercial and retail tenants at the 3 million square feet of space being re-developed Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass are getting a free ride, as part of an effort to help the developer and the city transform the area.
Office rent in space owned by David Walentas and his Two Trees Management company is going for about $20 a square foot, but tenants are getting most of that back through new city tenant-incentive programs.
In addition, Walentas is using a trick pioneered by Tony Goldman in both SoHo and Philly, giving cool retailers free rent for a year or more to liven up the streets with arts, antiques, chocolates, wine and dining.
He enticed a Korean grocer with two years of free rent, and the grocer put the money into creating a jam-packed store that’s already more than simply produce.
The city and state are also moving ahead with plans to re-develop the waterfront there.
Rent for an apartment in one of the huge lofty habitats that Walentas has created in other buildings is more than $2,000.
The condo Clocktower Building is fully sold, except for the 50-foot high clock tower itself, which Walentas has waiting for the right owner.
Peek into the former manufacturing buildings’ large, pre-built spaces – many with sunset views of Downtown Manhattan – and the young workers are toiling over computers, rendering ties, dispensing healthcare info or designing Web sites.
Another floor is funkier with its cement hallway geared to artists and their dripping paint, woodworking debris and sculpturing stuff.
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High-heeled Charles Jourdan is stepping into a new SoHo site, taking space vacated by another French footware specialist, Freelance.
The 10-year deal gives Charles Jourdan a 1,350- square-foot store plus a basement at 155 Spring Street, between Wooster and West Broadway – in the middle of SoHo’s sales frenzy, where the asking rent had been $400 a foot for the 26-foot wide storefront.
Caroline Banker of Douglas-Elliman repped the building owners while Stuart Ellman of Judson Realty fitted the tenant.
“It will open this fall,” said Banker.
Charles Jourdan currently has two Manhattan stores, one at 777 Madison Avenue between 66th and 67th Street and the other at Macy’s Herald Square.
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Celebrated watch and jewelery designer, Dino Modolo and Benny Shabtai, the president of Raymond Weil USA, are launching a flagship jewelry collection called Di Modolo Milano.
To show it off, they are making the 2,000- square-foot space next to Bottega Veneta – formerly occupied by Tourneau Watches – a tres upscale and bejeweled playground for the rich.
“If I ever catch my wife in there, she’s in trouble,” said David Crowley, of West Land Corp., which represents the building owner. “The jewelry will be loaded with diamond and rubies.”
In March, Gucci bought Modolo’s design lab, Di Modolo Associates, which creates the watch faces for many luxury brands, but has nothing to do with this store. Similarly, Raymond Weil USA is not involved in the venture.
“It will be a fabulous store,” Marvin Scherzer, vice president of sales and marketing for Di Modolo Milano, who noted Modolo is also designing the shop.
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How do you tap a real estate competitor’s brain in a gentlemanly way?
Put its chief executive officer on your board.
That’s what Insignia Financial Group, the parent of commercial brokers Insignia/ESG and white shoe residential broker Douglas Elliman, is doing by asking shareholders to approve Stephen Ross for one of its board seats.
Ross, the fiscally savvy head of Related Cos. – one of the largest owners of apartments in the U.S. and the developer of the AOL Time WarnerCentre – has a tax attorney background. Along with being one of the nicest guys around, he’s one of the few that understands the tricky world of housing finance tax credits, and he has other wisps of knowledge that are helpful to bottom lines.
Now that Insignia has taken on the task of playing shepherd to MetLife’s middle-market Stuyvesant Town – where they’ve tossed the multi-year waiting list out of the new windows – the public company will need someone on board with the knowhow to handle the upscaling to market rents.
* Please send e-mail to: lweiss@nypost.com