A dead summer for commercial leasing? Hah! Realty Check proudly brings you more than 600,000 square feet of Midtown deals involving high-profile tenants in prime locations.
The catch is, they’re all renewals or long-term conversions of subleases to direct leases.
But they’re reassuring nonetheless, in a market where availability has soared from under 10 percent a year ago to 15 percent by some estimates today.
And — no surprise — none of the deals involves financial-services firms.
Interestingly, the same four-man team at CB Richard Ellis had a large hand in the two largest transactions.
The biggest is for law firm Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz, which just renewed on 240,930 square feet at 51 W. 52nd St., the CBS-owned Sixth Avenue tower known as “Black Rock.”
The firm re-committed to four floors for 10 years. The landlord was repped by CBRE’s Michael Laginestra, Scott Gottlieb, Andrew Sussman and Michael Wellen; the tenant by Studley’s Howard Nottingham.
The same CBRE team negotiated for Showtime Networks at Paramount Group’s 1633 Broadway, where the CBS-owned premium cable channel took a 15-year renewal on 202,495 square feet. The landlord was repped in-house by Arthur Biocchi. Terms were not available for either renewal.
Publishing giant Bonnier Corp., whose 50-odd magazine titles include Popular Science, Sport Fishing and Working Mother, has long been a subtenant at the L&L Holding Co.-managed 2 Park Ave. at 32nd Street.
Now it’s converted all of its 100,750 square feet there to a direct lease, prompting L&L co-founder David W. Levinson to say, “We’re delighted that Bonnier not only enjoyed its tenant experience but thought enough of our building to decide to make 2 Park its long-term home.”
Bonnier was repped by CBRE’s Jason Gorman and Paul Walker; L&L Executive Vice President David C. Berkey acted in-house for the landlord.
Although all parties were mum, market sources said the asking rent was $50 a square foot.
Meanwhile, Berkey, wearing his broker’s hat for L&L Holding’s brokerage arm, L&L Acquisitions, negotiated an expansion and renewal by Cornerstone Research at Boston Properties’ 599 Lexington Ave.
Cornerstone is upping its space slightly to 34,891 square feet, adding some space on the 41st floor in addition to floors 42-44.
No word on terms there, either, but a sublease availability on the 20th floor at 599 Lexington is asking $95 a square foot.
And speaking of L&L, the lease signed by the Batali-Bastianich Hospitality Group to launch an Eataly Italian food and wine marketplace at L&L’s 200 Fifth Ave. is for 42,500 square feet on the ground floor, rooftop and in the concourse — not 32,000 as reported elsewhere.
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Last Tuesday, several media organizations credited Bloomberg News or The Wall Street Journal with a story that George Comfort & Sons and RCG Longview had revived a deal to buy Worldwide Plaza from Deutsche Bank. Bloomberg and the WSJ indeed carried the story that day.
But my colleague Lois Weiss not only had the story on Tuesday as well — she reported it a day before anyone else on The Post’s Web site, where it was posted on Monday, July 6, at 1:42 p.m.
You can, as Casey Stengel would have said, look it up.