NEW YORK CITY-Colliers International has arranged a 27,966-square-foot lease for title insurance firm Fidelity National Title Insurance. The firm will move to the space, once it’s built out, from One Park Avenue. The move marks an approximate 5,000-square-foot expansion.

Leon Manoff, vice chairman in the New York office of Colliers International, represented the firm in the move. He tells GlobeSt.com that several factors made SL Green Realty Corp.’s 485 Lexington Ave. an attractive prospect.

“This was an opportunity for them to be on their own floor, with everything that goes on there under their control,” Manoff says. “That also played a role and they were able to secure a 7-year lease with the landlord doing the bulk of the construction, so from an economic standpoint there were some benefits.”

Also of interest to the firm was increased proximity to Grand Central, which Manoff says “opened up other opportunities for them.”

Staying put at Vornado Realty Trust’s One Park Ave., where Manoff thinks the firm’s growth could have in the end been accommodated, would have likely meant giving up the prospect of having one full floor.

“It would have been at the end of the day been a hodge-podge of spaces added on, instead of taking a whole parcel and building it to suit their needs, which obviously have changed over the last eight, nine years that they were located over at One Park,” Manoff says. “Their operation changed and they needed a fresh start—a different layout and structure—and this gave them the opportunity to do that.”

Manoff says that they did “quite a bit of looking,” and that, while suitable space wasn’t difficult to find, finding the right space at the right price was a challenge. Asking rents at 485 Lexington Ave. are in the mid to upper 50s, he adds.

Colliers International associate director Robert Kennedy also worked the deal on behalf of the tenant. David Amsterdam, with SL Green, represented the landlord in-house.