Nonprofit Inks Midtown Lease

NEW YORK CITY-After shopping around the Penn Station submarket for new office space, non-profit organization Common Ground has decided to stay put at their longtime home of 505 Eighth Ave., says brokerage firm Cassidy Turley. The firm’s not-for-profit practice arranged an 18,000-square-foot, 10-year lease for the organization inside the Newmark Holdings-owned building in Midtown.

The organization–which builds transitional housing for low-income New Yorkers and helps address homelessness issues–will relocate from the 15^th floor of the building to the fifth and 12^th floors. Both were gutted, renovated and modernized to suit the tenant’s needs. “We made a cost-effective economic solution with a minimal disruption to the staff and its daily operations,” says David Lebenstein, senior managing director and principal of Cassidy Turley’s not-for-profit practice, who secured the new space along with managing director Mark Furst. “We did look at some other options where they could all be on one floor, but at the end of the day, they really wanted to stay in that commuting pattern and that geographic area.”