Some companies continue to expand in Manhattan despite dire forecasts of retrenchment and layoffs.
Accounting/consulting firm Rothstein Kass & Co. is in growth mode at SL Green’s 1350 Sixth Ave., where it will nearly double its current space before settling into an approximate one-third eventual expansion.
In a complex restacking deal negotiated for the tenant by Cushman & Wakefield’s Jared Horowitz, Rothstein Kass has renewed in advance its current lease, which expires in 2016, for 55,308 square feet on floors 10, 15 and 16.
The renewal is for 10 more years beyond 2016.
The firm also added 44,000 square feet on floor 9, where it will take possession in two years, and on floor 14, which it will occupy immediately. However, it will give up the 16th floor in 2014 after its 9th floor buildout is complete — yielding a net total of 88,049 square feet on two pairs of contiguous floors.
That will make Rothstein Kass the tower’s largest tenant. The deal includes “monument” signage for the firm outside the building. Rothstein Kass first moved to 1350 Sixth in 2004, when it had a mere 19,000 square feet.
The asking rent was in the mid-$60s a square foot.
SL Green, which bought the tower as part of the former Reckson portfolio, was repped in-house by Howard Tenenbaum and Gary Rosen.
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Despite hoopla over a new, scaled-down design for the Jean Nouvel-designed tower next to the Museum of Modern Art on West 53rd Street, construction of the avidly awaited, multi-faceted spire could still be four years off.
That information discreetly emerged in MoMA’s own 2010 financial report, as first pointed out last week by CultureGrrl blogger Lee Rosenbaum, who’s led the media pack covering the off- and on-again project to be developed by Hines.
Although MoMA sold the land to Hines for $125 million in 2009, the developer also needs some air rights from MoMA, and the museum document revealed the sale of those rights don’t have to close until 2013 — with possible extensions to 2015.
Since Nouvel’s original design was rejected by the City Planning Commission two years ago, Hines has chopped the 1,250 foot-tall tower down to 1,050 feet. Nouvel’s design has also been tweaked to give the tower a proper enclosed top, among other changes. The project is to include 481,000 square feet of apartments, a 97,000 square-foot hotel, and 52,000 square feet of expansion space for MoMA.
Rosenbaum also got MoMA to acknowledge it doesn’t yet know what it will do with the former headquarters of the American Folk Art Museum between Museum Tower and the Hines site. MoMA closed on its purchase of the site from AFAM last Friday for $31.2 million — coincidentally the same day that former AFAM Chairman Ralph Esmerian was sentenced to six years in prison for fraud.
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Meanwhile, across the street, the former intended home of Italy’s design museum, Triennale, at Paramount’s 40 W. 53rd St. will likely be home to a restaurant instead.
After we reported Triennale’s 18,000 square-foot lease last year, the institution defaulted on the deal. The space has been on the market via a Cushman & Wakefield team led by Bradley Mendelson, who said that despite the four-level configuration being “functionally challenging,” it was “sought by a half-dozen high-profile restaurateurs, none of them local.”
Mendelson said a lease is now out with “a great restaurateur not from New York — not a chain,” he emphasized.
Mendelson wouldn’t talk numbers, but other brokerage sources said the target is a blended rate of around $100 a square foot. Only 2,500 square feet are on the ground floor.
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Speaking of restaurants, operators who say they’d love to open in the Wall Street area but are frustrated by scarcity of suitable locations have at least one large-scale option:
The former digs of the Yankee Clipper at 170 John St. are on the rental market via Gui Tepedino at Roberta Panos Inc. — some 9,600 square feet with room for 350 seats, including 4,700 at ground level, 1,110 on the second floor and the rest below grade.
The restaurant space occupies a retail condominium in the six-story building, which was built in 1840. Tepedino says the owners are asking $33,000 a month, “a very aggressive deal,” he said.
The seafood Mecca, a fixture for 30 years, closed a few years ago and the space was briefly occupied by an OTB parlor.
The site is across the street from the South Street Seaport’s Pier 17 and the new East River Esplanade.