Newmark Closes 59,000 SF in New Office Leases

NEW YORK CITY-One of the first tenants to sign a new lease after being displaced by the World Trade Center attacks, the State of New York’s Office of the Court of Claims is now in the process of setting up shop at its new 37,275-sf space at 26 Broadway.

Newmark and Co. Real Estate Inc. president James Kuhn and executive vice president and principal Brian Waterman represented the Court of Claims in the transaction. Building owner Constitution Realty LLC was represented by Caleb and David Koeppel of Koeppel Companies LLC. According to Waterman, the 10-year deal carries a value “in excess of $12 million.”

Waterman tells GlobeSt.com that the combination of a flexible building owner and the emergency leasing procedures for government agencies enacted following Sept. 11 helped get a deal in place a mere nine days after the bombings. “One of the primary reasons they took the space was that the building owner was very easy to deal with. We also had the ability to work through what has always been perceived as a difficult process of signing a lease with the State of New York. But it took three days to sign the lease, whereas it would ordinarily take anywhere from 90 to 120 days.”

Previously located at 5 World Trade Center, which was destroyed in the Sept. 11 bombings, and then housed in temporary space, the Court of Claims will now occupy the entire 10th floor of the31-story office tower at the corner of Broadway and Beaver Street. Built by Carrere & Hastings and Shreve, Lamb & Blake for John D. Rockefeller as Standard Oil Co.’s world headquarters, the 350,000-sf tower was completed in 1926.

In another transaction arranged by Newmark, law firm McLaughin & Stern LLP has leased an additional 10,000 sf of expansion space at 260 Madison Ave. Newmark brokers William G. Cohen and Matthew T. Leon represented building owner 260/261 Madison Equity Corp. and the tenant. The law firm will now occupy 30,000 sf on three contiguous floors. Details of the transaction were not released.

Newmark brokers William D. Mendelson and Matthew Geigen represented the Biddle Sawyer Group in its relocation to an 11,885-sf space on the 11th floor of 21 Penn Plaza, a class A building owned by GHG realty. The firm was previously headquartered at 2 Penn Plaza.