STATEN ISLAND, NY-Leasing is booming at Muss Development’s 60 Bay St., driven in large part by happenings next door. The 113,692-square-foot office complex benefits from its location near the Staten Island Ferry and easy access to both Lower Manhattan and New Jersey, to be sure, but the 182,720-square-foot courthouse under construction next door, which will house the Supreme Court, Criminal Court and Jury Assembly when it’s expected to open in 2012, helps as well.

Jason Muss, principal at Muss Development, which owns and manages 60 Bay St., thinks that the courthouse has helped to drive recent leasing activity in the building.

“We’ve been very fortunate in the past six months with the courthouse coming in,” Muss says. “They’re building a massive $220 million courthouse and clearly the legal community and other office tenants are going to have to be close to it. That’s really helped us with some of the leases we’ve done.”

Those leases include an expansion for the Legal Aid Society, which has taken the entire 11,277 square feet on the second floor in addition to its existing space on the third floor, for a total of 20,000 square feet in the building. Michele Freeman and Christopher Mansfield at CBRE represented the Legal Aid Society.

Relocating from elsewhere on Staten Island, the US Department of Veterans Affairs, represented by Del Smith at JDSA Real Estate and Rob Sattler at Newmark Knight Frank, has signed a five year lease for almost 4,000 square feet in the building as well. And a court reporting service—Jay Dietz & Associates—signed a 10-year lease for 2,000 square feet on the eighth floor.

Even though proximity to the courthouse was clearly a draw, Muss thinks that transportation options, building upgrades and a dearth of class A space on Staten Island helped as well.

“We have a lot of areas around us that we can gain access to,” Muss says, referencing how close Lower Manhattan and areas of New Jersey are. “And of course our bread and butter—Staten Island tenants—really don’t have a lot of class A space to chose from and appreciate having a well maintained, well-run office building.”