Metropolitan Real Estate, an international investment advisory firm, will be moving its New York headquarters from 135 East 57th Street to 650 Fifth Avenue, a class A office building on 52nd Street near Rockefeller Center.
The investment firm signed an 11-year lease for 11,289 s/f of office space, occupying the entire 29th floor.

William Macklowe Company has attracted a high-profile new media firm for another of its full-floor pre-built spaces at 386 Park Avenue South, the 20-story Midtown South office building undergoing repositioning.

Cushman & Wakefield announced that The Lanier Law Firm, a Houston-based company, has renewed its lease and expanded in the Tower 56 office building at 125 East 56th Street, between Park and Lexington Avenues.

Jones Lang LaSalle has completed a sublease transaction with Manikay Partners LLC at One Bryant Park, also known as Bank of America Tower.

Asking rents were “north of $100 per square foot” according to Dan Turkewitz, JLL senior vice president, represented the Manikay Partners, the subtenant.

Shutterstock, Inc., a global image marketplace on the Internet, has leased 85,000 s/f for a new headquarters at the Empire State Building.

Anthony Malkin, president of Malkin Holdings, which supervises the building, said Shutterstock will relocate from 60 Broad Street later this year, under the terms of an 11-year lease.

Less than a year after moving into pre-built offices on the 5th and 17th floors at 292 Madison Avenue, e-commerce company Borderfree.com is expanding.
The company — formerly Fifty-one Global E-Commerce — is relocating one of its offices to a larger floor that expands its footprint to 22,226 s/f. In addition, it is extending its lease to seven years.

Splashlight Photographic and Digital Studios, LLC, has signed a five year lease to expand its Hudson Square footprint.
The company, which occupies 63,000 s/f on the third floor at Trinity Real Estate’s 1 Hudson Square, is taking an additional 14,000 s/f at 225 Varick Street.

CORFAC International (Corporate Facility Advisors) announced the winners of the organization’s annual COR$TAR Awards.
The awards recognize referrals between CORFAC brokerage professionals in which two or more brokers from different firms represented a single client and company in a completed lease or sale transaction.
The COR$TAR Awards were presented at CORFAC International’s recent 2013 Spring Conference in Las Vegas by 2013 CORFAC International President Bill Hawkins, principal of The Chas Hawkins Co./CORFAC International in Nashville, TN. Among the brokers who referred transactions to other CORFAC Affiliates were:
Top Office Lease by Size …

Footwear marketers Wolverine World Wide have leased two floors of office space in the Carnegie Hall Tower, according to sources.

The company, whose portfolio includes Merrell, Sperry Top-Sider, Hush Puppies, Keds and Stride Rite, has been subleasing the 15th floor of the tower from Freud Communications, but will now directly lease that floor as well at the 14th, for a total occupancy of 22,000 s/f.

Asking rents were in the mid-$70’s psf.

The 14th floor is currently occupied by three other tenants, but Wolverine will take over the floor within a year.

The United States offered companies the greatest opportunities to reduce their overheads in 2012, with occupancy costs per workstation falling by 10.9%.
This was driven by an 11.8% decrease in space utilization — the amount of space each worker is allocated — with the biggest decreases recorded in Washington DC (-17%) and Los Angeles (-14%).
Even with the move to greater space efficiency, the US still has the most space per employee on average.
The findings were contained in a new Global Occupany Costs report from DTZ, a UGL company, which revealed that …