In an impending mega-deal, Google is close to signing a 360,000 square-foot lease at Related Cos.’ 85 10th Ave., sources told The Post.
Related has not formally put the space on the market. The hush-hush talks are so secret that some major players at CBRE, which is said to be working both sides, had not heard about it.
The 540,000 square-foot address, the former Nabisco factory, stands between 15th and 16th streets and between Chelsea Market and the High Line. It’s home to restaurants Del Posto and Colicchio & Sons.
Google, led by CEO Larry Page, owns the mammoth 111 Eighth Ave. nearby, where it has a significant chunk of its nearly 3 million square feet. But its expansion needs are so great that it has unsuccessfully tried to nudge out other tenants with long-term leases, such as Nike.
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Residents of 22 River Terrace in Battery Park City will soon have a new landlord. Rockrose, which opened the 27-story, 324-unit luxury rental apartment tower in 2001, has a contract to sell it to Los Angeles-based Centurion Real Estate Partners for $265 million, sources told Realty Check and Page Six Editor Emily Smith.
Speculation was rife that the prospective new owners would convert the property to condos but no one involved could be reached last night.
Centurion, whose principals include Jeffrey Worthe and John Tashjian, owns and manages an extensive commercial and residential US portfolio. In 2010, Centurion was tapped to turn around Battery Park City’s Riverhouse at One Rockefeller Park when an original partner ran into trouble.
Rockrose put 22 River Terrace on the block last summer through Cushman & Wakefield. The brokers declined to identify the buyer because the deal has yet to close.
The sale would represent the highest price paid for a residential building in the area since 2011’s sale of 95 Wall St. for $325 million and last year’s sale of 10 Hanover Square for $261 million, both brokered by Eastdil Secured’s Doug Harmon.
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Thanks to a broader noshing zone uptown, this year’s New York City Wine & Food Festival will have grazing room not only for more burger maniacs, but also for Annabelle the Cow.
The Old Homestead Steakhouse’s life-size bovine sculpture, perched over its entrance, will mooove for the first time to the festival site — among innumerable additions to the four-day culinary extravaganza.
After five years in cramped Meatpacking District quarters, the annual charitable fest will set up shop from Oct. 17-20 on the west side of Midtown. It will be anchored on Vornado-operated Piers 92 and 94 between 53rd-55th streets.
NYCWFF founder/director Lee Schrager says the Food & Wine magazine-presented event will pay $450,000 to rent both piers, compared with $305,000 for Pier 57 near West 15th Street and other venues downtown.
But it will have nearly twice as much space as before — a total 406,500 square feet compared with 224,000 square feet downtown.
The festival’s two signature events will mushroom — the Grand Tasting from 80,000 square feet last year to 130,000 feet, and the Burger Bash from 55,000 to 85,000.
“Pier 57 was our nucleus, but we outgrew it,” Schrager said. The festival also used Basketball City on South Street and other locations — “We were all over downtown and it wasn’t efficient,” Schrager said.
The city tapped Vornado’s Merchandise Mart Properties to redevelop and operate piers 92 and 94 in 2008. “Vornado approached us to look at their space,” Schrager said.
The deal enabled the festival to “consolidate five different venues into one compound,” Schrager said.
Superstar participating chefs such as Mario Batali, Scott Conant, Bobby Flay and Marcus Samuelsson will strut their stuff within a less than 1-mile radius, compared with 3 miles downtown.
The Hudson Hotel on West 58th Street will replace the Standard as host hotel.
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Here’s more on the two big downtown deals we first reported Friday on nypost.com:
The gross rent for the 20-year lease which brought the city’s Health & Hospitals Corp. to 240,000 square feet at 55 Water St. was in the “high $30s per square foot, approaching $40,” says Harry Bridgwood, executive vice-president of building manager New Water Street Corp.
It leaves less than 100,000 square feet available at the nation’s second-largest office tower. New Water Street is wholly owned by 55 Water’s owner, Retirement Systems of Alabama.
Last fall, the tower was flooded with nearly 50 million gallons of seawater by Hurricane Sandy. Bridgwood, who led the reclamation effort, said HHC is consolidating from several locations.
He also revealed for the first time that Alabama’s full repair cost after the storm “approaches $150 million.”
HHC was repped by Cushman & Wakefield’s Bob Ballard. The landlord was repped by CBRE’s Mary Ann Tighe, Howard Fiddle, Brad Gerla and Evan Haskell.
At Jack Resnick & Sons’ 255 Greenwich St., meanwhile, Fairway Market’s retail lease for over 52,000 square feet is worth $100 million over 20 years, according to Resnick executive managing director of leasing Dennis Brady. He said the food store, three blocks north of the World Trade Center, will have 40,000 square feet of concourse space now used by printer RR Donnelly.
“It was perfect for Fairway because it has high ceilings once used to accommodate big presses and an off-street loading dock,” Brady said.
Brady and Brett Greenberg repped Resnick in-house. Fairway was repped by Newmark Grubb Knight Frank’s Jason Pruger and Welco Realty’s Alan Cooperman.
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Manhattan third-quarter office vacancy rose from 10.6 percent to 11.8 percent in the third quarter of 2012, but fell from 12.1 percent in the second quarter of this year to 11.8 percent, according to the latest market data from Jones Lang LaSalle.
Absorption over the last quarter was due mainly to strong leasing downtown and in the Midtown Class-B market.