Cantor Fitzgerald Renews 2 Leases in Manhattan

110 E. 59th St. Image courtesy of Newmark Knight Frank

Financial services pillar Cantor Fitzgerald LP has two new 16-year lease renewal agreements for its global headquarters in New York, according to Newmark Knight Frank, which arranged the transactions. The leases cover a total of 208,060 square feet at adjacent buildings in the Plaza District in Midtown Manhattan.

READ ALSO: Manhattan Office Leasing Jumped 45% in Q4

The larger space is 151,890 square feet at Jack Resnick & Sons’ 110 E. 59th St., a 37-story office tower that recently completed a multi-year, $40 million-plus capital improvement program. The second renewal is for 56,170 square feet at the adjacent 499 Park Ave., a 28-story boutique office property that is an investment of a fund managed by American Realty Advisors.

The Newmark Knight Frank team that represented Cantor Fitzgerald was led by Neil Goldmacher, chairman, National Tenant Representation, and included Jared Horowitz, vice chairman, and Jason Perla, head of NKF’s New York Consulting Group. Brett Greenberg and Fran Delgorio represented Jack Resnick & Sons in-house; Paul Amrich of CBRE represented the landlord at 499 Park Ave.  

As of Sept. 11, 2001, Cantor Fitzgerald’s corporate headquarters was on floors 101 through 105 of One World Trade Center, a few stories above where the hijacked American Airlines Flight 11 struck the building at 8:46 a.m. All of the 658 Cantor Fitzgerald employees who had arrived there for work that morning, totaling more than two-thirds of the company’s workforce in New York, were killed.

A spotty submarket

Midtown’s 2019 leasing volume was down nearly 25 percent from the previous year, marking a six-year low, according to a fourth-quarter 2019 report from Colliers International. Availability climbed from 9.8 percent in 2018 to 11.1 percent, yet the average asking rent nonetheless rose 3 percent to $85.80.

The Plaza District was the bright spot of Midtown, generating half of the submarket’s leasing, which included three leases for more than 250,000 square feet each: WeWork at 437 Madison Ave., Shearman & Sterling at 599 Lexington Ave. and Sumitomo Mitsui Bank at 277 Park Ave., according to Colliers.

The Plaza District also racked up a nice sales transaction in the fourth quarter, when Vanbarton Group sold its 133,500-square-foot 45w45, at 45 W. 45th St., to AFIAA for $126 million.