Gaming the system

Creative amenities lure new tenants

THE fun-factor train keeps on chugging along at the city’s premier office buildings as landlords struggle to arrest an alarming increase in vacancies, which now top 20% overall.

The Post reported last week that landlords have introduced unprecedented numbers and varieties of amenities that are exclusively for tenants’ use — a strong inducement both for luring companies to their properties and encouraging employees to quit their WFH habit and return to the office.

Now comes word of even more of them.

There’s a 300-seat “town hall” space that doubles as a “social stair” overlooking a West 33rd Street plaza at Vornado’s redeveloped Penn 2; a plush breakfast room for employees at Brookfield’s 22 Vanderbilt; and 15 (count ’em, 15) golf simulators at former New York Post owner Peter Kalikow’s 101 Park Ave.

Athletic facilities are much in demand these days — we noted last week that the Seagram Building’s subterranean playground, for example, has basketball and pickleball courts, and even a rock-climbing wall.

What’s next? Indoor ski slopes?

Interestingly, many of the most elaborate fun facilities are in buildings that are anything but starved for tenants.

For example, 101 Park Ave. is 97% leased to an array of financial tenants, and 1 World Trade Center, which has a 64th-floor wellness and athletic center, is more than 95% leased to Condé Nast and others.

Dumbo Market

Jasper, the big, mixed-use project rising on the Hunters Point waterfront, caught a big one for its retail portion.

Dumbo Market, a gourmet food emporium that’s currently operating as Urban Market in a building across the street, signed a lease for a 13,500-square-foot store on Jasper’s ground floor.

To be run by the same team as Urban’s, which Dumbo will replace, it will open in twice as much space as its predecessor’s in early 2025 when the $370 million project’s rental apartments open.

Jasper’s development team consists of Domain Companies, LMXD (an affiliate of L+M Development Partners), the Vorea Group and Bridge Investment Group.

The completed project aspires to a “holistic environment” with 499 apartments, of which 150 are reserved for those with a 130 percent area median income. Tenants will have access to a pool, fitness equipment and classes and landscaped courtyards.

Dumbo Market has two other locations in Brooklyn and will soon add one in Hoboken.

CBRE banners

Face it, leasing activity is less than overwhelming these days. So the heavy hitters at CBRE took advantage of the lull to give the 8.2 million New Yorkers what everyone was clamoring for:

Yes! More of CBRE’s “Real Estate Capital of the World” banners. And with a fresh new look! Some 150 green-and-white banners now hang along and near 57th Street, in the Grand Central Terminal area, FiDi, Hudson Yards, the Meatpacking District, Chelsea and the West Village. There were only 125 in 2023.

CBRE first rolled out the banners in 2004 “to raise our profile in New York,” the company said.

Tristate CEO Mary Ann Tighe said of the banners’ proliferation, “When people think of New York, they visualize our skyline. Our firm has executed skyline-shaping transactions in New York for 50 years — and we’re just getting started.”