NEW YORK CITY-Manhattan’s Far West Side got two votes of support this week: luxury-leather goods maker Coach sealed the deal to take over 600,000 square feet for their new corporate headquarters at Related Cos’ 26-acre mixed-use Hudson Yards site, and Cushman & Wakefield became exclusive leasing agent for Brookfield Office Properties’ 5.4 million-square-foot Manhattan West tower on Ninth Avenue between West 31st and West 33rd Streets.
Industry leaders tell GlobeSt.com that the two announcements further affirm the transformation of the once-beleaguered neighborhood into a transit-oriented, mixed-use community. “It used to be a real abandoned place, like something out of a Charles Bronson movie, a real dangerous part of town,” says Jeffrey Katz, CEO and principal partner of Sherwood Equities, who started investing in the Far West Side as early as 1985. The firm first purchased the westerly block-front of 34th and 35th Streets on 10th Avenue in a quick-sale for $5 to $6 million after Mayor Ed Koch worked to push the adult bookstores, strip clubs and dive bars out of the area, Katz explained. “We bought that site kind of knowing that this is Manhattan and this is a stone’s throw from the central business district and good things would happen, and so they are,” he added.
And much progress is currently underway. Construction on Related’s 1.7 million square-foot tower is set to commence in mid-2012 and be ready for occupancy in 2015. Along with the 7 subway line extension, AMTRAK's new Moynihan Station and the new Hudson Boulevard Park, the 60-block, 300-acre neighborhood is starting to come into its own.
“I really believe this will be the new center for Manhattan when you look at how tenants have gravitated west,” Bruce Mosler, chairman of global brokerage for C&W, tells GlobeSt.com, who is handling leasing at Manhattan West. The Skidmore Owings and Merrill LLP-designed project will consist of two office towers of two million square feet each, a third of approximately one million square feet and a fourth, smaller building, which will most likely be mixed-use space, says C&W. Mosler anticipates that an anchor tenant will be secured by the time construction begins in the first quarter of 2012. “We think the project lends itself to a very wide cadre of tenancies, beginning at financial services institutions because we are able to create very large floorplates at the base,” he says. “We also believe that technology firms will be interested, as well as all service companies, including healthcare, education and a wide range of tenants on a global scale.”
Mosler says he cannot discuss rents prematurely, but he notes that the markets will dictate that when the time comes. “It will be competitive,” he says.
The C&W team representing Brookfield will be led by Mosler, Arthur Mirante, Josh Kuriloff, Michael Rotchford, Maureen Kelly, Mikael Nahmias, Ethan Silverstein, Ken McCarthy, senior economist and managing director of research, as well as global C&W partners, James Young, head of EMEA Office Brokerage and Arsh Chaudhry, executive managing director in Singapore.
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