Jeweler shuffle on 5th
T HE
pearl has opted to stay in its oyster. Jewelry company Mikimoto (America), and its glowing cultured pearls, will restack its offices into 25,000 square feet at 680 Fifth Ave. on the southwest corner of West 54th Street.
Mikimoto will soon occupy most of the 13,000square-foot fifth floor, which has 12-foot-high ceilings and tons of light and will now be contiguous to its current sixth-floor spot.
It will also give up an 8,000-square-foot portion of the fourth floor that it had subleased from The Gap in 2000 when it first moved into the building. At the time, it was represented
by a trio from Savills Studley
The same Savills Studley team, Daniel Horowitz, Jeffrey Peck and Kurt Handschumacher, represented it Tuesday in its 15year lease, as they did in Mikimoto’s previous expansion here and in its 2008 renewal of its 730 Fifth Ave. store.
JLL’s Frank Doyle, David
Kleiner and Harlan Webster represented No. 680’s owner, Josef Buchmann, whose deal is enabling Mikimoto to upgrade its space. The asking rents in the building, also known as Buchmann Tower, range from the low-$70s to the low-$80s per square foot, and the building is managed by Valor Capital Partners.
Mikimoto is celebrating 125 years since founder Kokichi Mikimoto perfected the cultivation of pearls. Twenty years later he started his Black Sea farm, enabling the exquisite liv- ing gems to be worn by all.
Brokers who worked on transactions for Peloton and FAO Schwarz took home the top Real Estate Board of New York retail deals of the year prizes Tuesday night.
The Most Ingenious Retail Deal of the Year, which demonstrates exceptional broker acumen, was won by teams from both JLL and Newmark Knight Frank for Peloton’s Manhattan West location, which will include a studio, retail store and offices.
The fitness firm will soon have 32,129 square feet on multi-levels facing both the street and the new central plaza of Manhattan West.
Peloton was represented by Benjamin Birnbaum of Newmark Knight Frank, while Patrick Smith, Matthew Ogle, Corey Zolcinski and Bob Gibson of JLL represented the Brookfield developers. The Most Significant Re- tail Deal of the Year was won by brokers Kenji Ota and Neil Seth of Cushman & Wakefield for representing FAO Schwarz in a 16,000-square-foot lease at 30 Rockefeller Plaza. The award represents the most meaningful retail transaction in the Gotham retail market, and launching the iconic toy store at a new iconic location after the store had been homeless for several years certainly fit the bill.
The 20th annual awards were handed out during the REBNY Retail Committee’s cocktail celebration at the 101 Club.
The deals were among 18 nominated for the prestigious REBNY awards.
On Thursday afternoon and evening, the industry will decamp to Chelsea Piers for the JDRF Real Es- tate Games to compete in friendly contests while raising money for JDRF, which is the leading global organization funding type one diabetes research.
Meanwhile, Pace Investments has signed a 2,100square-foot lease at 80 Eighth Ave., where it will continue to provide support for those who are struggling with mental and behavioral disorders.
The building once housed Bankers Trust, which provided the very same suite for its board member and former Gov. Al Smith.
Pace was represented in the threeyear deal by Alexander Furst at Douglas Elliman Commercial. Matthew Mandell represented the GFP Real Estate ownership in-house, which had an asking rent of $65 per square foot.