By Patrick Hedlund
A.I.G. insures milestone deal Lower Manhattan can now boast the city’s largest commercial real estate deal of the year with the announcement this week that American International Group had signed a lease for 800,000 square feet of space in the Financial District.
A.I.G. will sublease the space from Goldman Sachs at 180 Maiden Lane, according to reports, eventually planning to take over 30 stories of the 41-story tower near the Seaport.
The company will begin moving in by September and plans to occupy 80 percent of the 1-million-square-foot space by 2011.
The world’s largest insurer will reportedly not sell its headquarters at 70 Pine St., opting instead to consolidate its other scattered Downtown offices into the single tower.
Goldman has been attempting to sublease space at the building, which is owned by the Moinian Group, before its planned move into a new office being built in Battery Park City.
Outfitting Hudson Sq. While new office tenants have been moving to Hudson Square in droves, the accompanying boutiques and restaurants have been slower to follow suit in the still-somewhat-sparse West Side neighborhood. But the area’s retail reputation got a boost with last week’s announcement that high-end haberdasher Atelier had inked a long-term lease for a store on Hudson St. in a move from Soho.
The luxury menswear shop, which has been located on Crosby St. just south of Houston St. for the past five years, will take over 3,453 square feet of space at 304 Hudson St., between Spring and Vandam Sts.
Atelier will inhabit a larger total space in Hudson Square, despite leaving a prime location in retail-rich Soho. The store inked its 10-year lease with landlord Trinity Real Estate, with rents in the mid-$40s-per-square-foot range.
“We are more of a destination shop,” said Luigi Borrata, a manager at Atelier, noting Hudson Square’s reduced rents as one reason for the move. “Of course, we’re depending on foot traffic, as well.” That pedestrian activity will be bolstered by incoming media tenants, such as Newsweek magazine, with new offices at 395 Hudson St., and a 22-story, mixed-use hotel/office planned for 330 Hudson St. Atelier’s new address was formerly home to the notorious nightclub NV, which shuttered in 2005, and the clothier plans to be in the new space by mid-August.
“Hudson Square is a really up-and-coming area,” Borrata added, pointing to the convergence of train stations in the neighborhood. Of the area’s current lack of shoppers, he said, “I’m sure that will change over the next couple of years — hopefully.”
“Hudson Square’s creative workforce is naturally appealing to a trendsetting retailer such as Atelier New York,” Trinity Real Estate president Carl Weisbrod said in a statement.
Garett Varricchio of Trinity represented the owner in the transaction, and Susan Penzner of Susan Penzner Real Estate represented Atelier.
‘Yuppie Scum’ Another salvo in the battle for the Bowery has been fired, this time from vengeance-seeking neighbors protesting new area businessman Bruce Willis’s wine bar and its apparent right-leaning affiliations.
The feud has played out on the pages of the New York Post’s Page Six, where local activist John Penley initially called out “right-wing Republicans opening yuppie wine bars in our neighborhood,” referring to Willis’s Bowery Wine Co. on E. First St. and the Bowery.
The New York Young Republican Club, which held a monthly social at Willis’s enoteca, shot back with its own reply in the Post, challenging Penley to a duel. He responded in kind a few days later with his plans to demonstrate in front of the establishment, and fliers promoting the protest tagged with the headline “Die Hard Yuppie Scum” have recently been popping up around the East Village and Lower East Side.
Penley plans to gather with neighborhood activists and personalities — including performance artist Penny Arcade, Reverend Frank Morales of St. Mark’s Church in-the-Bowery and L.E.S. Jewels — this Friday at 8 p.m. The event will lead up to a planned pig roast named in Willis’s honor for the upcoming 20th anniversary of the Tompkins Square Park riots.
But even though protesters plan to gather “as close to the bar as the police will allow us,” don’t expect Penley to be swilling a Sancerre inside before the demonstration.
“You might find me at the Mars Bar beforehand having a couple of drinks,” he said of the wine bar’s antithesis on E. First St. and Second Ave. “I only patronize old-school dive bars in the neighborhood anyways. If the Young Republicans have the balls to meet me at Mars Bar, I’ll be there early and buy them a drink,” he dared.
mixeduse@communitymediallc.com
