An investment sales team from the real estate services firm Jones Lang LaSalle was hired this week to handle the sale of 90 Fifth Avenue, a roughly 140,000 square foot building that is nearly fully occupied by the publishing company Forbes Inc.
The offering follows the $65 million sale earlier this year of Forbes’s headquarters at the nearby office building 60 Fifth Avenue to New York University, a price that equated to about $530 per square foot. Forbes, which owned that property, had originally marketed the 122,500 square foot building in 2007 at almost double the eventual sales price.
Forbes has said that it is in search of a new Manhattan headquarters, although the deal with NYU was arranged so that the publisher would continue to occupy its space on a five-year lease.
At 90 Fifth Avenue, which is being sold by RFR Realty, Forbes has a lengthy remaining commitment for its space that stretches until 2020 and is currently offering a number of its floors in the 11-story tower for sublease. The building’s brokers have made it known that Forbes is willing to sever its commitment to the space in case a buyer is interested in clearing out the building to convert it to another use, such as residential.
An added component in the sale of 90 Fifth Avenue is the building’s roughly 26,000 square feet of retail space, which is located at a busy pedestrian intersection on the northwest corner of 14th Street. A portion of the space is currently leased to TD Bank and the New School occupies the second floor of the building, but the two floors could potentially be joined together eventually to create a larger retail space with a mezzanine level.
The sale of 60 Fifth in January appeared to serve as a sobering reminder just how far the commercial real estate market had fallen since the boom years before the downturn. But there are signs that pricing has begun to rise in recent months. The recent sales of the office buildings 340 Madison Avenue, 125 Park Avenue and 600 Lexington Avenue for instance were greeted with widespread interest among buyers hungry for deals after the long period of inactivity and sold for prices in the $600s per square foot according to sources and written reports.
A source said that RFR Realty, the real estate company that owns midtown trophy buildings such as Lever House and the Seagram Building, is aiming for a sale price of $115 million or more for 90 Fifth Avenue.
A brokerage team led by Richard Baxter, Jon Caplan, Ron Cohen and Scott Latham is handling the sale. The property is one of the first assignments the four executives have won since leaving the real estate services firm Cushman & Wakefield in recent weeks to relocate to Jones Lang LaSalle.