An international law firm is trading one Sixth Avenue block for another to move in with the Durst Organization.
Steptoe signed a lease for 58,000 square feet at 1133 Sixth Avenue, the Commercial Observer reported. The 15-year deal gives the law firm the 43rd, 44th and 45th floors of the Midtown Manhattan property, the top three floors of the property.
Steptoe will be relocating from Brookfield Properties’ 1114 Sixth Avenue, a mere one block south of its new home. It’s unclear when the relocation will take place.
Asking rents at the Durst building range from $115 to $120 per square foot. Durst was represented in-house by Rocco Romeo and Nora Caliban, while CBRE’s Timothy Dempsey and Greg Maurer-Hollaender represented the tenant.
Tenants at the property include Take 2 Interactive, the National Basketball Players Association and law firm Patterson Belknap Webb & Tyler. The 1.1 million-square-foot, 45-story office building includes a lobby, an outdoor plaza and 5,000 square feet of rooftop space.
Durst secured $1.1 billion in debt in 2021 to refinance office properties at both 1133 Sixth Avenue and 114 West 47th Street. Bank of America, Citigroup and Wells Fargo originated the 10-year, fixed-rate, interest-only CMBS loans.
In the second quarter, office leasing volume hit 9.2 million square feet, an 18.9 percent drop from the first quarter, according to a report from Colliers. Nevertheless, the borough recorded its strongest first half of the year in more than a decade; tenants signed deals for 20.7 million square feet in the first six months of the year, according to Colliers, the most since 2014.
Lower Manhattan saw momentum for office leasing in the spring, when Masterworks agreed to lease 37,000 square feet on the 57th Floor of 1 World Trade Center, owned by Durst and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. The deal is a sublease from mortgage lender Network Capital and came as Masterworks looked to exit its office space at Brookfield Properties’ 225 Liberty Street.
— Holden Walter-Warner
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