May 8, 2009 by jack petrie.

The German-American Chamber of Commerce, Inc. New York celebrated 15 years of young executive networking in the German-American business community with an art opening on April 30th, 2009, hosted by CresaPartners.  The event featured German-born New York artist, Jim Avignon, who exhibited his latest work.

Avignon employs a narrative structure in his paintings to present political, social, artistic and pop-cultural themes through motifs from the world of fables and fairy tales, using animals as his subject to represent the human condition.  His works have served as a stage for a wide variety of protagonists taken from cartoons, anime and fantasy settings.  The bright, cheerful mood that prevails in his paintings conceals a feeling of the unknown creeping in the background.

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May 8, 2009 by jack petrie.

Adzinia Media Group Expands in NYC

While Amazon has mostly been grabbing headlines this week for the launch of its new Kindle device, Adzinia Media Group, a division of Amazon, has relocated its offices in New York.  Adzinia sells online display and email advertising products to advertisers on Amazon.com web sites.

Adzinia will be moving into a 10,050 rsf space at S.L. Green Realty Corp.’s 1350 Avenue of the Americas location.  Prior to this it was located in 2,400 rsf offices in S.L. Green’s 420 Lexington Avenue property.

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May 8, 2009 by jack petrie.

Tenant’s Viewpoint

Opportunity knocks at the door of commercial tenants!  This real estate market will continue to soften for the remainder of 2009 and into 2010.  This, however, does not mean that tenants cannot achieve opportunistic terms today.  The wait-and-see mentality created by the economic shocks has begun to subside as opportunistic tenants create market leverage by planning ahead and becoming more knowledgable.  Many landlord’s are responding to the slower velocity of leasing by considering all offers and negotiating all terms.   In fact, in today’s leasing market everything is negotiable!  Tenant-friendly terms such as lease takeovers, termination options, lower loss factors and greater flexibility are more prevalent today.

Market Overview

The Manhattan office market continues to decline, while the statistics are still catching up to the true state of the market.  While vacancy rates remain below 10% in all submarkets, availability (which includes occupied space available for sublease) is now greater than 13% in Midtown and 10% in Downtown.  Asking rents have declined at an accelerating pace since Q1 2008 and the spread between asking and taking rents has increased as concessions (free rent and improvement allowances) have increased dramatically.  Unemployment continues to rise with many economists predicting 300,000 job losses from peak employment levels, 40% of this loss in the financial services sector.

Trends & Statistics

Midtown
Midtown Class A vacancy rates increased from 6.4% to 7.4% in the last quarter.  Asking rents for Class A space dropped by 7.5% to $72.32 per rentable square feet (”rsf”) on average.  Midtown Class B vacancy increased to 5.4%, with a third consecutive quarterly reduction in asking rents resulting in an average rate of $46.83 per rsf.  There was negative net absorption in Class A space, while Class B space had a small amount of positive absorption.

Midtown South
Vacancy rates in both Class A and B space rose significantly from 3.9% to 6.6% while asking rents fell from an average of $54.03 to $51.73 per rsf.  Net absorption was slightly negative at (38,212) rsf.

Downtown
Class A vacancy increased slightly from 5.8% to 6.1% with a corresponding decrease in asking rents from $53.41 to $48.11 per rsf.  Net absorption was negative.  Class B property saw a jump in vacancy rates from 8.8% to 9.4% with asking rents falling dramatically from $47.03 to $40.75 per rsf.  Downtown Class B space also experienced negative absorption.

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May 8, 2009 by jack petrie.

On Wednesday, May 27th, 2009, CresaPartners will host the iBreakfast panel discussion on iPhone Apps & Mobile Platforms - How is this Software Store Shaping Up?, featuring Eric Litman of Medialets and Larry Reich of Digital Age.

With upwards of $100 million of iPhone applications sold, this is emerging as the growth platform of the digital industry.  But is it reaching a plateau or are we at the beginning of a market expansion that will crossover to all other mobile device makers and cellular carriers?

About Medialets/Eric Litman

Eric Litman is Chairman and CEO of Medialets, a NYC-based premium advertising network and analytics provider for mobile platforms such as iPhone and Android.  Eric began his career with technical and software engineering positions at GEnie and NeXT Computer.  He pioneered the commercialization of the internet as a cofounder of Proxicom.  Previously, Eric was instrumental in building digitalNATION, a world-leading web hosting and services provider, from its launch through its $100m acquisition by Verio Internet/NTT.

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May 8, 2009 by jack petrie.

McLean, VA-based Clearspring inks lease at 584 Broadway

Clearspring, a maker of the proverbial “widget” (internet-style), has relocated its offices from the Grand Central submarket to 584 Broadway in Soho.  The company was represented by Aaron Berkey, Jamie Addeo & Jack Petrie of CresaPartners.

About Widgets

A widget, or web applet, is a portable chunk of code that can be installed and executed within any separate HTML-based web page by an end user without requiring additional compilation.   Widgets often take the form of on-screen tools such as clocks, tickers, daily weather, etc.  Web widgets offer commercial interest primarily because they provide interactivity and viral distribution through social networks, such as Facebook and MySpace.  The first known web widget, Trivia Blitz, was introduced in 1997.

About Clearspring

Clearspring creates, distributes, tracks and monetizes widgets for web publishers.  Clients of the firm include RockYou, NBA.com, NBC/Universal, Adobe, Time, Discovery Channel and Maxim.com.  According to comScore’s October 2008 data, Clearspring’s monthly reach jumped more than 30% to 332.5 million unique worldwide visitors, furthering their position as the worldwide leader in widget distribution.

Clearspring is headquartered in McLean, Virginia with offices in Los Angeles and London in addition to NYC.

About 584 Broadway

584 Broadway is a 220,000 rsf, 12 story property located on the eastside of Broadway between Prince & Houston Streets in New York City’s historic “Soho” neighborhood.  The building, constructed in 1897, was renovated in 1990 and now boasts dual renovated lobby entrances and onsite owner-management.  The current asking rental rate is $57.00 per rsf.  Major tenants include AM Collections, Slover & Company, cFX Incorporated and Dailycandy.   The property is owned by Olmstead Properties Inc.

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