Aby Rosen’s $30 million “repositioning” of 757 Third Ave. did the trick. A bunch of new leases have brought the 500,000 square-foot office tower at East 47th Street to 95 percent occupancy less than two years after former main tenant KPMG moved out.
In the largest of several recent deals totaling 167,000 square feet, audit, tax and advisory firm Grant Thornton just signed for 130,357 square feet. The 15-year lease moves the firm to RFR’s 757 Third Ave. from 666 Third Ave. and expands its Manhattan presence by 20,000 square feet.
In addition, Berkley Insurance Co. took 37,453 square feet at 757 Third, which locked in new leases and renewals for nearly 400,000 square feet in the past 24 months.
“At 757 Third, RFR has comprehensively outperformed the local submarket,” said RFR Chief Operating Officer Gregg Popkin.
Mitch Konsker, who with Alexander Chudnoff led the Jones Lang LaSalle team representing RFR, said Grant Thornton had seemed likely to renew at 666 Third or move to another location close by.
“They originally didn’t want to go north of 45th Street,” Konsker said. But Konsker credits JLL’s Dan Turkewitz for proactively reaching out to Grant Thornton and making sure it took a good look at 757 Third first. The JLL team also included Matt Polhemus and Diana Biasotti.
Once they had the firm’s attention, “we created an unbelievable branding package for them,” Konsker said, including signage over the entrance and their own security desk in the lobby.
Popkin worked closely with JLL. “What I’ve found in this market, coming out of a recession, is that large-tenancy deals require a personal touch,” he said. “This tenant in particular really wanted to know they would be embraced [by the landlord], since they’d had other experiences where promises weren’t kept.
“We felt that by attending all the sessions, we were able to put a better face forward — that this is an RFR building and there really is a difference,” Popkin said.
RFR’s upgrades to the 1962-vintage tower include modernized, energy-efficient systems and a new lobby. “We basically created a brand-new building,” Rosen told us recently.
A large corner retail space with 200 feet of frontage is being marketed by NGKF’s Jeffrey Roseman.
Grant Thornton was repped by DTZ Americas’ Mike Christian, Gregg Espach and Chris Helgesen. Berkley was repped by JLL’s Christopher T. Kraus, Brian Higgins and Reid Longley as well as Bernard Realty’s Belinda Scanlon.
Sen. Chuck Schumer gave a timely nudge to help Larry Silverstein finish building 3 World Trade Center this week.
The $2 billion project at 3 WTC was approved in 2009 for $338 million in tax-exempt federal bonds as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act — but the bonds technically expired in 2010. Silverstein couldn’t build at the time because the recession had stifled large-scale commercial leasing.
Although the matter is complicated, Schumer appealed to Treasury Secretary Jack Lew to make the IRS agree that the bonds could still be used for 3 WTC. Otherwise, it would have taken time-consuming legislation to free them up for Silverstein. The need for them became urgent when GroupM last month signed a 516,000 square-foot lease to be the 80-story tower’s anchor tenant.
“This is the best news out of downtown in a long time,” Schumer told us Monday.
Silverstein also has $1.3 billion in Liberty Bonds for the project, so he’ll have a total $1.64 billion in tax-free financing. He’s spent $500 million in insurance proceeds to build the tower’s podium. The tower is to open in 2017.
As Kingsbridge Armory in The Bronx finally appears close to turning the lights back on after standing vacant for 20 years, it’s worth marking a milestone for another huge, one-time military landmark — the Fort Washington Avenue Armory in Upper Manhattan.
Last week, the uptown armory celebrated 100 years as a mecca for track and field events — most famously as home to February’s Millrose Games, which moved there from Madison Square Garden in 2012.
The mammoth building was exclusively a homeless shelter in the 1990s. Dr. Norb Sander, a marathon runner and a practicing physician, led the campaign to rescue the classical-revival structure from ruin. Backed by then-mayor David Dinkins, he took it over in 1993 and today is chairman of the Armory Foundation, which operates it as a nonprofit under an agreement with the city.
The armory is home to the New Balance Track and Field Center and the National Track and Field Hall of Fame, which draw visitors as well as athletes to the neighborhood.
The Kingsbridge Armory might soon be relaunched as an ice-skating arena, but previous attempts to revive it ran afoul of politics. It needed a savior like Sander’s foundation, which has enjoyed close cooperation with the city under several mayors — but the Bronx has a way of snuffing out dreams prematurely.