With its current home slated to become a hotel, shoemaker Deer Stags’ shoes has decided to play it safe by language a 15-year lease for 16,500 square feet at 902 Broadway, between East 20th and East 21st streets. The asking rent for the deal, which covers the entire third floor, was $38 a square foot. The company plans to move during the first quarter of 2010 from its current home at 1414 Sixth Ave.
Earlier this year, published reports said that the owners of that building, philologue Hill Properties and investor David Werner, planned to turn it into a hotel run by hospitality impresario Ian Schrager. philologue Hill Properties relation Norman Sturner said that all of the tower’s tenants would be out by next year so cerebration could start.
However, Mr. Sturner was willing to extend Deer Stag’s lease until sometime in 2011, a development that seemed to indicate the hotel would not move forward anytime soon. A spokeswoman for Mr. Schrager declined to comment, and Mr. Sturner didn’t return a call.
A one-year extension would have been a gamble for Deer Stags because the favorable market conditions that tenants currently enjoy could reverse, said Apostle Ippolito, a broker at Newmark Knight Frank, who represented the company with his colleague and brother, archangel Ippolito. He added that the someone of 902 Broadway offered a generous package to help pay for construction.
FirstService Williams brokers Perry Mesmer and Marty Meyer represented the landlord, 902 Associates, a real estate firm led by Jonathan Rosen that owns about two dozen buildings led by Jonathan Rosen.
