KKR is on the brink of completing a deal to buy a big chunk of office space at Related Cos./Oxford’s Hudson Yards, we are told. Sources said an announcement may come as early as this week.
The publicly traded equity firm was previously reported in talks for a Hudson Yards stake of up to 400,000 square feet, but it was never known at which building.
We’re told it will be at the 90-story 30 Hudson Yards, now under construction at Tenth Avenue and West 33rd Street.
About half of the 2.6 million-square-foot tower is committed to Time Warner, which will move its headquarters there from Related’s Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle in 2019.
No comment all around.
There are rumored jumbo-space hunts which fizzle out before a deal is actually made, and then there are real ones. In the latter category is a search by UBS, which is methodically prowling for between 700,000 square feet and 900,000 square feet in Midtown.
The bank is not expanding but contracting: It recently scaled back its presence in Stamford, Conn., and at 299 Park Ave. in Manhattan. Its main business center is at 1285 Sixth Ave., where it has 900,000 square feet.
But UBS would be a plum prize for landlords and developers who face having lots of floors to fill in the next few years.
UBS must move because AXA, which owns 1285 Sixth with JP Morgan Asset Management and also owns by itself 787 Seventh Ave., has put both towers up for sale for a hoped-for $4 billion. We’ve learned that AXA has told UBS it won’t renew its lease, which is up in 2020.
Sources say UBS has seen or soon will see presentations by representatives for at least five possible new homes. Three are existing towers: the Durst Organization’s 4 Times Square, Related’s Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle and Rockefeller Group’s 1271 Sixth Ave. Two others are under construction — SL Green’s One Vanderbilt and Brookfield’s One Manhattan West.
Durst’s 4 Times Square will be empty when Skadden Arps leaves in 2020 (for Manhattan West); TWC will be available when Time Warner moves to 30 Hudson Yards in 2019; and 1271 Sixth when Time Inc. leaves for Brookfield Place downtown over the next two years.
Meanwhile, both One Vanderbilt and One Manhattan West will be completed in time for UBS in 2020. UBS is expected to issue a formal request for proposals once its preliminary look-sees at all the properties are completed.
L&L Holding Co. founders David W. Levinson and Robert T. Lapidus have certainly enjoyed the ride with 150 Fifth Ave., the 1880s-vintage boutique office building they bought in partnership with the Carlyle Fund in 2000 for a mere $38 million.
L&L soon lured music label EMI to lease the whole building, and then profited by recapitalizing it with different partners three times.
Now another milestone looms. The building will be empty in January 2018.
“We get back almost 200,000 square feet,” Levinson said, when subleases expire for tenants who took space previously used by Universal Music Group, which bought out EMI’s assets in 2012.
“It’s in very good condition because everything we put in was new, but we’ll make some improvements to the lobby” among other upgrades, Levinson said.
Unlike previously, he said L&L wasn’t necessarily looking for a single tenant but might sign two or three.
For Levinson and Lapidus, 150 Fifth, which is debt-free, is something of a good-luck charm. “It was the first building Rob and I ever closed on after we formed our partnership,” he said. Today, L&L owns and/or manages Manhattan trophies including 195 Broadway and two top-to-bottom redevelopments — 390 Madison Ave. and 425 Park Ave.
Compass, the technology-driven residential real estate platform, has gobbled up more of RFR Realty’s boutique office building at 90 Fifth Ave.
In its latest expansion, Compass signed for 25,204 square feet, bringing its total to nearly 90,000 square feet. RFR principal Aby Rosen has previously said asking rents are in the mid-$70s.
Rosen once planned to sell 90 Fifth until longtime tenant Forbes defaulted on its lease, giving him a chance to reposition it. Compass signed its first lease there for 25,000 square feet in July 2014. It expanded in October and again this past April.
Now, buoyed by $50 million in recent funding led by Institutional Venture Partners, it’s growing again at 90 Fifth near East 15th Street.
RFR leasing chief AJ Camhi said the new lease illustrates “how well located and sought-after 90 Fifth has become in this submarket.”
Compass CEO Robert Reffkin said the 90 Fifth space “fosters collaboration among all of our teams” of agents, engineers and designers.