Two large financial-firm leases that were in the works have just been signed — and in the year’s biggest non-surprise, neither was in East Midtown.
While the Grand Central and Plaza districts wait on East Midtown rezoning, brand-new towers and redeveloped older ones to the west continue to snap up large tenants. (The rezoning measure, which would allow larger, modern new buildings to go up in the mostly stagnating district, was cleared by the City Planning Commission last week and now continues to slowly wend its way to a vote by the City Council.)
Mizuho Americas completed a lease for 148,000 square feet at Rockefeller Group’s 1271 Sixth Ave., the former Time-Life building.
An ongoing, $600 million redesign will make the tower virtually new. John Maher, part of a CBRE team that repped Rockefeller Group, said 1271 Sixth’s new curtain wall should be finished by summer 2019 and the redevelopment project entirely finished by spring 2020.
Mizuho Americas is a subsidiary of Mizuho Financial Group, which boasts $1.8 trillion in global assets. Mizuho’s taking 1271 Sixth’s large second and third floors plus some below-grade space. It’s the second new tenant signed at the currently empty address since Major League Baseball committed to 400,000 square feet.
The asking rent for Mizuho’s floors was in the low $80s. The firm will consolidate staff from several other locations including 320 Park Ave., where it has its trading operation.
Mizuho has been reported to be in talks for 200,000 square feet at 1271 Sixth in addition to the just-signed 148,000 feet, but the status of those talks were unclear.
In addition to Maher, Rockefeller Group was repped by CBRE’s Mary Ann Tighe and Howard Fiddle and by Rockefeller’s Ed Guiltinan in-house. Mizuho was repped by a Savills Studley team including Mitchell Steir, Matthew Barlow and Steve Berliner.
Meanwhile, Related Co.’s Far West Side leasing locomotive powers along at full steam. Private equity firm Silver Lake has completed a lease for 56,000 square feet at 55 Hudson Yards, the 1.3 million square-foot, 51-story tower at Eleventh Avenue and West 34th Street that Related is developing with Oxford Properties Group. (Mitsui Fudosan owns a majority stake.) Silver Lake will move from Sheldon Solow’s 9 W. 57th St.
Also coming to 55 Hudson, which is now 60 percent leased, are Steve Cohen’s Point72 Asset Management; two law firms, Milbank Tweed and Boies, Schiller; Intercept Pharmaceuticals and electronic trading platform MarketAxess.
A 75,000-square-foot lease with Dan Loeb’s hedge fund Third Point, first reported by the Real Deal, is also expected to be signed at 55 Hudson Yards within a few weeks, sources said. Third Point will exit Lever House, marking yet another defection from the once-almighty Park Avenue corridor.