NEW YORK | 11 Times Square | 600 FT / 183 M | 40 FLOORS | T/O

[mrskyline]

Originally Posted by Dac150

This will be interesting. From an article I read in the Post a few months ago, I remember it saying that UBS is looking to vacate its 299 Park Avenue location once that lease expires, which should be soon. As for the 6th Avenue location, I think there’s a good chance that those offices will remain intact given the kind of operations that go on there. If you guys remember correctly, the former wealth manager Paine Webber occupied that building, which UBS went on to acquire in the early part of this decade. However I do remember hearing that UBS isn’t fond of the ‘trading space’ within that location, but that was before the whole Stamford complex was initiated.

They have quite a few options though; but for some reason I don’t really see 11 Times Square matching the personality of an anchor tenant like UBS.

From what I have heard UBS is in big trouble for some of their questionable practices that have come to light. I know several people who have stopped doing business with them. Who knows, there may not even be a UBS for much longer.

[NYguy]

Originally Posted by Dac150

I was thinking about that myself, thing is though, I don’t have a feeling that they’ll want to move Downtown. As a matter of fact, it seems more and more financial institutions in general are flocking or have flocked to Midtown; including many traditional Wall Street firms.

That's true as well. But if they're looking for new in Midtown, 11 Times Square is it as far as size. Otherwise, they'll have to become an anchor tenant for a new tower. There's a site on West 34th Street newly available, complete with a subway opening in 2013 (what a coincidence).

[NYguy]

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/busines...02zWWautmEYPcI

Times Sq. tower's boost

By STEVE CUOZZO
January 26, 2010

Steven J. Pozycki's SJP Properties and law firm Proskauer Rose have reached a term-sheet agreement for a prospective Proskauer move to new 11 Times Square, three different sources said yesterday.

It will take several months more to draw up an actual lease for 400,000 square feet in the 1.1 million square-foot tower. A completed lease is by no means certain and the talks could yet fall apart.

But the term sheet is a major milestone in Pozycki's patient campaign to fill his $1.2 billion tower at Eighth Avenue and 42nd Street, which will be completed this summer but has yet to sign tenants.

A non-binding term sheet spells out all the main economic aspects of a landlord-tenant contract. It usually, but not always, leads eventually to a lease.

Beyond the obvious boon to SJP, a Proskauer move to 11 Times Square would have immense symbolic impact. It would validate not only SJP's investment in the $1.2 billion project -- a 35 percent equity stake with its partner, a Prudential real estate fund, Pozycki told us in 2007 -- but the entire cause of new Manhattan office construction.

Driving the SJP/Proskauer talks are several factors:

* Thriving Proskauer needs a new home that it can custom-tailor to its needs, which is more easily done in a new building than in its current home at 20 year-old 1585 Broadway.

* The law firm is feeling increasingly squeezed at the Morgan Stanley-owned Broadway address, where it has 12 floors. The bank is headquartered there and "isn't going out of its way" to accommodate Proskauer's need for extra temporary floors it must have if it were to rebuild its existing space.

* A lease at 11 Times Square might be $30 a square foot cheaper than it would have been at Boston Properties' aborted 250 W. 55th St. -- a project Boston suspended a year ago after the collapse of lease talks with Proskauer to be its anchor tenant there.

A lease at Boston's site might have cost $100-plus a square foot. SJP originally wanted that price for 11 Times Square, but last year the Real Deal re ported that Pozycki said he "would be real happy" with the high $70s, reflecting the mar ket's decline.

* While SJP is represented by a CB Richard Ellis team led by Stephen B. Siegel, Proskauer is also repped by CBRE. Having the same brokerage work both sides doesn't always lead to a deal -- it didn't at 250 W. 55th -- but it never hurts.

Ever since 11 Times Square started going up two years ago, the many-faceted, glass-wrapped tower designed by FXFowle Architects has been the poster child for the supposed evil of speculative development. Most every story about rising vacancies has cited 11 Times Square's obviously temporary vacant status to claim that the market will be weak forever.

[NYguy]

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE61966T20100210

Aquarium may land in Times Square office tower

Ilaina Jonas
Feb 10, 2010

As if Times Square wasn't enough of a zoo, just wait for its newest neighbor: a giant aquarium in a new office building.

Toronto-based Aquarium Development Corp has signed a preliminary agreement to lease the first seven floors of 11 Times Square on the corner of Eighth Avenue and 42nd Street in Manhattan, three people familiar with the matter said on Wednesday.

The aquarium would be the first tenant in the 40-story, 1.1 million square foot building. Its neighbors would include the Port Authority Bus Terminal and The New York Times building.

If it makes a firm deal and signs the lease, the Aquarium company's lease would last 25 years, one of these people said. A lease could be signed soon and the aquarium could open as early as 2011, that source said.

The aquarium would occupy one floor, while another floor would be concourse space, two of the sources said. The project likely would cost about $100 million, they said.

It is unknown how much the admission would be or what kind of creatures would get free digs in the prime real estate. It is also unknown if the aquarium would be visible from the street and how big it would be.

At least one public aquarium has graced Manhattan before, sitting at the lower tip of the island in Battery Park, south of the financial district. The aquarium fell victim to Robert Moses, the iconoclastic New York City Parks Commissioner who rebuilt much of the city according to his own designs.

One of his casualties in his frequent political battles with his rivals was the aquarium, which was closed in 1941, according to Robert Caro's book, "The Power Broker."

Aquarium Development Corp Chairman Gerald Shefsky was not available for comment. Shefsky in 1999 built the million-gallon Newport Aquarium in Kentucky. That aquarium has 70 exhibits and 14 galleries, including a loggerhead sea turtle, sharks, jellyfish and penguins, according to an aquarium brochure.

The building's New Jersey-based developer, Steve J Pozycki's SJP Properties, and its backer, Prudential Financial Inc's Prudential Real Estate Investors, might stock the building with sharks too -- the landlord is negotiating with law firm Proskauer Rose LLP to become an anchor tenant.

Lisa Iurato, a spokeswoman for Prudential, declined to comment as did a spokesman for SJP Properties.

_____________________________

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000....html?mod=e2tw

Deal May Bring Aquarium to Times Square

By ANTON TROIANOVSKI
February 10, 2010

New York's Times Square may be getting a new tenant: a seven-story aquarium.

Jerry Shefsky, a Toronto-based developer, said on Wednesday that he has signed a preliminary agreement with the landlord of an office tower on the western edge of Times Square to go forward with the $100 million project. He would install tanks featuring sharks, rays, penguins, otters, and other animals in the bottom floors of the 40-story building, known as 11 Times Square, hoping to attract some of the 35 million people who pass through Manhattan's major crossroads every year.

Mr. Shefsky, 76 years old, has built aquariums and shopping centers around the world. He cautioned in an interview that the lease agreement for 11 Times Square isn't yet final. But he said he may start building out the space as early as this April with the hope of opening the aquarium in September 2011.

A deal with Mr. Shefsky would be a long-awaited bit of good news for the developer of 11 Times Square, SJP Properties Inc., and its major financial backer, a real-estate fund managed by Prudential Financial Inc. SJP, led by New Jersey developer Steven Pozycki, broke ground on the tower in 2007 without having first secured a tenant, hoping that the hot Manhattan office market would bring sky-high rents as the building neared completion. But the market turned—New York City office rents plummeted 20% in 2009, according to Reis Inc.—and SJP's empty tower on the corner of 42nd Street and 8th Avenue has become a symbol of commercial-property woes.

SJP is also negotiating to lease 400,000 square feet in the building to law firm Proskauer Rose LLP, said a person familiar with the matter. The building is slated to be completed in the next few months.

The proposed aquarium's unusual placement inside a skyscraper means it'll be different from most big-ticket fish exhibits. Preliminary plans call for about half of the floor space to be taken up by water exhibits, Mr. Shefsky said, while the rest will be occupied by things like a pirate museum and educational displays about the marine world. "It's anything but an aquarium in the format you might imagine," he said. Mr. Shefsky's company, Aquarium Developments Corp., also built the Newport Aquarium near Cincinnati, Ohio.

The Times Square project would likely have fewer fish than some of the high-profile aquariums built in recent years. Mr. Shefsky says he currently expects his tanks to contain about 600,000 gallons of water. Atlanta's Georgia Aquarium, which opened in 2005, has more than eight million gallons of water.

Mr. Shefsky said he has lined up financial backers to help pay for the aquarium's installation, which will cost more than $100 million. He declined to name those backers, and he said he wasn't ready to release a rendering of the aquarium. Mr. Shefsky discussed his plans after an inquiry from a reporter.

[Lecom]

Not a bad idea with the aquarium. Times Square could always use more destinations, maintaining its draw for domestic and international tourists in an increasingly more competitive market.

[Dac150]

Nice to see a turnaround in tenant activity for this one. An aquarium in Times Square would be fantastic.

[scalziand]

I bet this would be the only aquarium in a skyscraper in the world.

[Antares41]

Lawyers and sharks in the same building! How interesting!

[evanmack]

woah, how fast did this building go up?

[NYguy]

^ Pretty quickly, and for the time they made us and the City wait to fill that hole up, well done.

Originally Posted by Antares41

Lawyers and sharks in the same building! How interesting!

Yeah. Interesting and convenient for the mobsters. Now when they say you'll be "sleeping with the fishes" they can literally take an elevator ride to the feedings...

[NYguy]

http://curbed.com/archives/2010/02/1...s_goes_pro.php

11 Times Square Exits the Minor Leagues, Goes Pro



February 18, 2010
by Pete

When 11 Times Square was first rendered, designs for the 35-story glassy office tower from architecture firm FXFowle featured an odd hodgepodge of corporate symbols meant to stand in for future tenants. Turns out the real thing isn't so different! What could become Times Square's biggest fish bowl has some new signage. Above the main lobby at the corner of 41st Street and Eighth Avenue the makings of "eleven" climb up the facade and, just below, letters spelling out "PRO" are repeated on the glass bricks framing the entryway. Inside the lobby the PRO tag is repeated on the wall facing out to 41st Street. The building has reportedly landed a deal for the law firm of Proskauer Rose to take a bunch of space, so this could be the first visible indication of a long-term relationship.

[evanmack]

Is this building completed?

[NYC4Life]

Curtain wall appears to be done, now it's down to the interior work and finding some tenants.

[NYguy]

They're still doing something at street level. But I will be glad when they are done, and out of the way. That sidewalk has been closed the whole time.

[NYguy]

Usually the lower floors are completed first, but the lower floors of this one are still a mess. Maybe it has something to do with the change in plans.


http://ny.curbed.com/archives/2010/0...nants.php#more
11 Times Square Flaunts Phantom Tenants



Friday, March 12, 2010, by Pete

Aside from the promise of a few fishes down below and some legal eagles up top, pinning down prospective tenants at the new 11 Times Square office tower has proven to be problematic. But additional names were recently affixed to this 35-story skyscraper from SJP Properties. Just outside the entry doors at Eighth Avenue and 41st Street new signs have gone up for the Laerdna Corp. and Elland Lauge Associates LLC. They sound important! But our searching revealed nary a match, so either these two companies are very clandestine or the design crew from FXFowle is simply setting up some sample signage to see how it looks. And then, while sifting through the 11 Times Square website, something shiny snagged our attention. We were hooked!

Hanging up high in the tower's lobby will be a kinetic sculpture by artist Tim Prentice, who creates mobile pieces in the tradition of Alexander Calder. The sculpture at 11 Times Square, a suspended set of thin metal panels shown in a render of the lobby, will undulate over the entryway, like a school of fishies floating in the air.

The lobby interior rendered by redsquare, with kinetic sculpture by artist Tim Prentice hanging above

[JohnFlint1985]

[NYguy]

Such a difference to this stretch of 8th Ave than a few years ago.

[NYguy]

http://www.nypost.com/p/news/busines...wV6ZBTDtPpXB5N

Big deal nears in Midtown

By STEVE CUOZZO
April 27, 2010

A monumental deal for law firm Proskauer, Rose to move to SJP Properties' new 11 Times Square is "imminent," sources said yesterday.

The lease -- first reported on The Post's Web site yesterday afternoon -- is expected to be signed by the end of May and possibly sooner.

No deal is done before it's done, but the 400,000 square-foot lease will likely make the law firm the anchor tenant in Steven J. Pozycki's much-watched, 1.1 million square-foot tower at Eighth Avenue and 42nd Street. Once Proskauer stakes its claim, other large office tenants are expected to follow.

The Post first reported exclusively on Jan. 26 that Proskauer and SJP had signed a term-sheet agreement that would likely, but not necessarily, result in a signed lease. CB Richard Ellis represents both sides of the deal.

The all-but-done deal will be sweet vindication for Pozycki, who started building environmentally and electronically advanced 11 Times Square across the street from the New York Times headquarters in 2007 and has endured snickering from those who fretted it would glut the market.

Terms were not known, but Pozycki has previously said he'd accept rents in the $70s per square foot after originally hoping for $100 and higher.

But meanwhile, Toronto-based aquarium creator Jerry Shefsky's plan to open a giant fish-filled wonderland in the glittering tower's base is not on such a fast track.

Although Shefsky boasted a few months ago that he, too, had a term sheet at 11 Times Square, talks sputtered -- "although they seem to be back on," a source said.

[RobertWalpole]

This is good news. I like this tower.

[HomeInMyShoes]

Quite a handsome tower. It sits nicely.