The 1.8-million-square-foot building has about 300,000 to 350,000 square feet of space available, with serious interest from potential tenants for almost all of it, Larkin asserts. Brookfield acquired the 16-story tower in 2011 and plans to give it a new, glass exterior and unobstructed floor-to-ceiling windows.

The building will be incorporated into Brookfield's planned 7-million-square-foot campus called Manhattan West. That complex will have a residential tower, two office buildings, a hotel and 200,000 square feet of retail space. Two acres of landscaped public space will sit at the center of the campus. A significant piece of the project is a platform Brookfield has been constructing over part of the rail yards west of Penn Station using technology usually employed for building bridges.

Brookfield is one of several developers with plans to build on Manhattan's far West Side and transform the area with shopping, offices, residences and hotels. Hudson Yards, the Related Cos. venture, includes more than 17 million square feet of commercial and residential buildings and 14 acres of public open space.

The "epicenter" of Manhattan's office market "is beginning to shift to Midtown West, Midtown South and Downtown," says Bruce E. Mosler, chairman of Cushman & Wakefield Inc.'s global brokerage and part of the team representing Brookfield. That movement largely has been driven by tenants such as R/GA in the technology, advertising, media and information-related business sectors, Mosler says.

Brookfield won't begin construction of its office towers in the Manhattan West project until it finds anchor tenants. But Mosler expects the makeover of Five Manhattan West to boost that effort.

"This gives tremendous credibility to the project overall because it speaks to the quality of what Brookfield is building," he says.