PRESS

Vacancy rates plunged and rents soared in the last month of 2006, capping off a record year for commercial real estate in the city. According to numbers from brokerage Colliers ABR, the vacancy rate for Class A properties shrank to just 6.0 percent – down from 6.5 percent in November and from 7.4 percent a year ago – as tenants continued their quest to rent every nook and cranny in the major office districts.

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Leasing activity in side street buildings in Manhattan has hit a frenzied pitch as tenants priced out of towers Ion the average search for comparatively affordable alternatives. The trend is another illustration of how tenants are scrambling in reaction to the red-hot commercial real estate market.

Law firm Graubard & Nihamin recently moved out of 250 Park Avenue South at East 20th Street, while construction subcontractor Granite Construction Northeast has vacated 1350 Broadway at West 36th Street.

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Park Slope’s Pavilion multiplex theater may have been sold, but it’s not a wrap for the popular neighborhood movie house. In fact, it’s the theater’s popularity – as well as a lease which runs through 2022 – that will ensure that in the future, the show will go on.

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This summer, Jill Schwartzman decided to move out of her shared Williamsburg apartment and find a place of her own. She initially searched in Windsor Terrace, the neighborhood bordering Park Slope, but found it too expensive. Her broker suggested Kensington, immediately to the south.

“At first I thought it was too far away, but I ended up really liking it,” said Schwartzman, 31, an editor at Random House. “Most importantly, there was no fee.”

Relative affordability varied housing stock and a burgeoning artistic community makes once-overlooked Kensington the Brooklyn neighborhood of the moment.

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Featuring Abraham Hidary on Hidrock’s Pavilion Movie Theater

With housing prices in brownstone Brooklyn at lofty levels, patrons of the Park Slope Pavilion movie theater often ask anxiously if it will be converted to condominiums.

The new owner has a reassuring answer, at least for the short term.

“It would be a great condo conversion at some point,” says Abraham J. Hidary, president of Manhattan-based Hidrock Realty Inc. “[But] it is a movie theater, and is going to remain that way for a long time.”

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Hidrock Realty has secured a $16.1 million refinancing for 35 West 36th St. from
Assurant, the original lender, at a 3.89 percent interest rate.

“Now is a great time to refinance commercial properties, as the lower interest rate environment has given owners the opportunity to increase income by lowering monthly payments,” said Abraham Hidary, president of Hidrock Realty. “By lowering our interest rate, we have significantly reduced our mortgage debt costs.”

Hidrock acquired the 12-story, 79,200 s/f Class-B property in 2007 and began renovations in 2008 to create loft-style office and showroom suites ranging from 2,500 to 6,500 s/f.

The firm also reconfigured the spaces to attract high-quality tenants. 35 West 36th St.
is currently 96 percent occupied, with a lease out on the remaining availability.

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Three new hotels have opened in the Herald Square area in recent months, joining numerous others that have been built nearby over the past several years.

Last month, a 167-room Courtyard by Marriott opened on the corner of Sixth Avenue and 35th Street, immediately adjacent to a 298-room Hilton Garden Inn that opened in 2009 and a 146-room Hampton Inn that opened in late 2008.

On 36th Street between Fifth and Sixth avenues, a 94-room Best Western Premier opened at the end of May. It is next to two other hotels that also opened earlier this year—a 135-room Holiday Inn Express and a 185-room Hyatt Place.

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New York City’s newest Courtyard by Marriott, developed by Hidrock Realty, is officially open for business. The hotel, located at 960 Avenue of the Americas, overlooks Macy’s Herald Square and features new sky lobby and room designs catering to Manhattan’s growing number of business travelers and tourists. The new hotel is Hidrock’s second
to open in three weeks.

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By Eddie Hidary

In the NYC office market that we at Hidrock Realty like to call “The Jungle,” tenant turnover leads to space renovations.

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