By Patrick Hedlund
HQ expansion
Ready-to-use office space provider HQ Global Workplaces signed a lease for over 22,000 square feet of space at 100 Church St. near the Tribeca-Financial District border, expanding their presence to include Lower Manhattan.
The deal cushions a recent blow to the 1958 building, which lost Newsweek as a potential tenant last month when the magazine signed for 165,000 square feet in Hudson Square.
The 21-story 1.1-million-square-foot building between Park Pl. and Barclay St. is currently undergoing a capital improvement program that includes structural and building work, window replacements and mechanical upgrades.
HQ now joins a roster of corporate and government tenants at the Sapir Organization’s building, including Niche Media, the New York City Law Department and the mayor’s office.
“It is a wonderful show of support for Downtown Manhattan and for 100 Church St. to have such a prominent corporate tenant select the heart of revitalized Downtown to accommodate their expansion,” Alex Sapir, Sapir’s president, said in a statement. HQ also leases over 35,000 square feet at Sapir’s 260 Madison Avenue.
Sapir is partners with Donald Trump in Trump Soho, which has drawn neighborhood fire.
Richard Rosenhaus, president of Rosenhaus Real Estate, represented HQ in the deal.
Soho’s European union
As with seemingly every new luxury Downtown development, the innovative Soho Mews condominium complex, now rising, has gone global in its search for residents, kicking off an international tour this week promoting the buildings to prospective buyers from abroad.
According to a press statement, exclusive sales agent Corcoran Sunshine plans to visit “Europe’s most fashionable cities to provide insight about the flourishing real estate market in Lower Manhattan and its most cosmopolitan district, Soho.” (Mixed Use actually had to reach out for this release, rather than it landing in our inbox, due to the Mews media team’s thought that local interest would be lacking.)
The tour starts this Thursday with a cocktail reception in Milan, Italy, followed by an event in Rome next week to call attention to the upscale lofts, located on W. Broadway between Grand and Canal Sts. near the Tribeca border.
“With a favorable currency rate, international interest in N.Y.C. properties remains incredibly strong, but savvy European buyers are seeking real long-term value for their investment,” James Lansill, senior managing director of the Corcoran Sunshine, said in the statement.
And with the Trump Soho condo-hotel rising only blocks away from the Mews and also courting an international clientele, what happens if the area starts to develop a distinctly non-New York accent?
“Well, Soho is already full of Eurotrash,” said Sean Sweeney, president of the Soho Alliance. “I hear more English spoken in Chinatown these days than on Prince St.”
A European émigré himself, the Scottish Sweeney called Soho the “quintessential American neighborhood” because of its cast-iron architecture, but chalked up the international influx to the area’s European architecture and thriving arts community.
Still, these were not reasons for Sweeney to move in back in 1976: “I was attracted because it looked the slum in Glasgow I was born in,” he said.
Rent Guidelines horde
At the rowdy annual meeting of the city’s Rent Guidelines Board last week, whistle-blowing tenants who came out in droves were dealt a blow when the board approved the highest increases for rent-stabilized units in nearly two decades.
The mayor-appointed board voted in favor of raising rents by 4.5 percent for one-year leases and 8.5 percent for two-year leases, as well as minimum monthly increases of $45 on one-year leases and $85 on two-year leases for long-term residents in apartments more than six years.
The animated gallery of sign-waving tenants snuck plastic whistles through the meeting’s metal detectors, causing a riotous scene by confronting both landlords and the nine-person board with their shrill protest before the vote. (At one point board members had to call a 15-minute recess due to the incessant noise.) But all the resistance was for naught, as the R.G.B. handed down its largest increases since 1989.
“I think everyone’s in shock,” said Michael McKee, treasurer for the Tenants Political Action Committee and founder of the group Tenants and Neighbors.
McKee added that Mayor Bloomberg handpicked the board for its “ideological opposition to rent regulation,” but that if the Democrats regain majority control of the State Senate, the laws would be revised. At that juncture, he said, the rent laws would be redrawn, and R.G.B. chairperson Marvin Markus would likely not be reappointed to the board.
“There’s no way Marvin could survive a confirmation hearing at City Council,” McKee said. “This is his last chance to stick it to us.”
City Council Speaker Christine Quinn, who herself lives in a complex with rent-stabilized units, London Terrace, in Chelsea, has thrown her support behind a measure introduced by State Sen. Thomas Duane seeking to reform the R.G.B. to address the erosion of affordable housing.
“Now, we have to keep pushing for it,” she told Mixed Use following the vote. “The possible changes in the State Senate [after Republican Senate Majority Leader Joseph Bruno’s just-announced retirement] may have created more opportunities.”
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