Shapses and colleagues Jason Schwartzenberg and Joe Messina represented Cicatelli Associates in the lease. The landlord, Newmark Holdings, was represented by Eric Gural and Allen Gurevich of Newmark Knight Frank.

Shapses says that he’s seen the market as favorable to tenants the past three years, and so non-profits--pinched for pennies--are sometimes able to take advantage and grab additional space for not a lot of additional money.

“We always look for our clients to be proactive,” Shapses says, “and that means more than anything else, exploring what the opportunities are if there is something that makes sense to do it sooner than later.

Barbara Cicatelli, president of Cicatelli Associates, says that her organization is expanding due to grants that it won.

“We received two grants from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria--both in Latin America--and one grant, which is a large regional grant,” Cicatelli says. “The Global Fund asked us to manage that one out of our New York City office and it’s a five year grant so we were needing more office space.”

Another reason for the additional space was that it’s a revenue generator for the non-profit, which rents it out to Pace University and the City of New York Dept. of Health, according to Cicatelli.

“It was the commitment of a five year contract that made us think that we should do this, because we really are tight,” she says. “But in the midst of all this, as all non-profits who are funded by government grants, we are feeling the pinch. It’s a hard time.”