The Israeli owners of 452 Fifth Ave. are wrapping up construction that will bring all five tower-floor elevators to the very top of the building where the late Edmond Safra used to have his isolated private office.
According to Ehud Elizur, the president of PBC USA Real Estate, which is the real-estate investment arm of IDB Group, the elevator and other capital projects should be completed early next year.
The new and calming Jerusalem stone lobby has already been a hit with visitors.
In November, a CBRE group is expected to launch marketing for the three top floors totaling 46,092 square feet that will be ready to lease in April.
“I don’t know what [the rent] will be, and we are aiming for three digits,” said Elizur, pointing to market forces, vacancy and timing before making a final decision.
In July, another PBC exec told the Commercial Observer it could be $140 per foot.
Along with the elevators, Elizur said, the company is making security, mechanical and electrical upgrades.
It is also installing a fourth building generator and an additional cooling tower so that its targeted international tenant base can control air conditioning on individual floors and always be able to work 24/7 — not just in an emergency.
“We already had more than this for HSBC [which occupies the base of the building] and wanted to give it to our other tenants,” said Elizur.
Baker & McKenzie has six floors with future puts on two others, while UK-based hedge fund Man Group has a new LEED silver installation on three floors designed by architect Scott Spector.
The security-conscious Safra — who, ironically, died along with a nurse in a blaze set by another nurse in his Monaco villa in December 1999 — directed the Eli Attie-designed 1985 development of his 30-story Republic National Bank headquarters on a site opposite the public library and overlooking Bryant Park.
Because of its location, views from the top floors go from river to river as well as down to 1 World Trade Center and the Statue of Liberty.
Safra planned the five tower elevators to serve only the 12th through the 28th floor, because the 28th was where all the shafts ended.
This forced Safra’s visitors to switch to one car that only went to 29. After going through a security check, a visitor would then be either directed to walk up to the 30th floor, or take a one-story elevator. Elizur said the Safra installation was changed when HSBC took over Republic Bank.
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While Elizur declined to discuss anything other than the US real estate, the CEO of its parent IDB Group, Nochi Dankner, met last week in New York with influential “rabbi to the stars” Yoshiyahu Yosef Pinto in order to find investors to help shore up IDB.
Rabbi Pinto told Israeli media that he sent wealthy Argentinian Eduardo Elstein and other Latin American Jews to Israel, where they met with Dankner at the end of last week to discuss buying a stake in Ganden Investments, through which Dankner controls IDB.
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Mitsubishi International Corp. has reworked its spaces and floors in a consolidation and expansion to 122,500 square feet at 655 Third Ave.
The anchor tenant was on floors 2 through 5 and has added 6 to its occupancy while giving up pieces on 8, 9 and the smaller entire 21st floor.
The asking rent was $54 a square foot, said Eric Engelhardt of the Durst Organization, who represented the building in-house. Chris Kraus of Jones Lang LaSalle and Eric Reimer, who has since left the firm, represented the tenant.
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In another Third Avenue deal, law firm Robinson & Cole just leased the entire 20th floor of 18,478 square feet at the Chrysler East Building at 666 Third Ave.
The firm will move next year from its home of the last nine years at 885 Third Ave., where it now occupies 11,864 square feet.
Greg Taubin and Craig Lemle of Studley, along with Andy Filler of RM Bradley, a Connecticut-based brokerage, advised the firm on the new deal. Greg Conen of Tishman Speyer Properties handled the deal in-house for the ownership.
Sources said the asking rent was in the mid- to upper-$60s a foot.
L’shanah Tovah to all.