A fancy Chinese restaurant has gobbled up most of the retail “cubes” at Ivanhoé Cambridge and Callahan Capital Properties’ 3 Bryant Park, aka 1095 Sixth Ave. at 42nd Street.
Coming next year to the second and third floors on top of the recently vacated Asics store is DaDong — a high-end eatery specializing in a duck dish that is one of Beijing’s most popular.
DaDong’s first US restaurant, led by famed chef Dong Zhenxiang, will boast nearly 13,000 square feet — not including outdoor terraces on both floors and a ground-floor vestibule entrance.
The lease brings 3 Bryant Park’s 107,000 square feet of retail space to over 90 percent spoken for, according to Callahan’s eastern region SVP of asset management, Michael W. McMahon.
The asking rent on the DaDong space was $2.3 million per year, but final terms were not released.
Ivanhoé Cambridge and Callahan bought the tower last year from Blackstone for $2.2 billion.
Although its 1.2 million square feet of offices are fully leased to MetLife, Salesforce, Verin and Dechert LLP, its 107,000 square feet of prime retail have long had an unfinished look despite the recent openings of Equinox and Tourneau.
That’s partly because Whole Foods, which signed a lease three years ago, only recently started to build out its space, and will open in early 2017. Meanwhile, leasing up the cubes took time.
Although jewelry chain Pandora is likely to thrive after recently moving into a ground-floor cube, athletic footwear boutique Asics closed just months after moving in due to a dispute between the chain’s corporate parent and the franchise holder.
Newmark Grubb Knight Frank’s Jonathan Krivine and Dennis Karr represented DaDong. The ownership was repped by JLL’s Erin Grace, Corey Zolcinski, Matt Ogle and Patrick A. Smith as well as SRS Real Estate Partners’ Mark Kapnick.
Vornado Realty Trust, which has development projects in the works on Central Park South and West 57th Street, has ambitions at another high-profile site: the southeast corner of high-end shopping boulevard Madison Avenue and residential East 86th Street.
Vornado, we’ve learned, quietly scooped up two adjoining buildings in December for a combined $60 million — five-story 50 E. 86th St. and two-story 1167 Madison Ave. The former is a five-story rental apartment building that’s home to bistro Demarchelier. The latter, an all-retail property, is home to Altamarea and chef Michael White’s popular Ristorante Morini.
There was no comment from Vornado.
The developer could sit on the properties for a while and buy up neighboring air rights.
It wasn’t immediately known how large a building Vornado could put up as of right.
In the latest step forward for One Vanderbilt, developer SL Green has awarded the first $5 million transit-improvement package to construction giant Halmar.
The contract is for improving the mezzanine subway platform under 125 Park Ave. and reopening the long-shuttered Mobil Passageway, which will re-connect the office building to Grand Central Terminal. Work is to start at the end of the July.
SLG is providing $220 million in transit and other public improvements as part of the 67-story development project.
Here’s one we can’t figure out. After we reported two weeks ago that venerable restaurant La Mangeoire on Second Avenue at 52nd Street was getting the boot for a new tenant, partner Gerard Donato called to say the story was baloney and that he had no intention of giving up the space, which has four years remaining on the lease.
However, Eastern Consolidated’s James Famularo clearly had the space on the market for landlord Jack Terzi, who’s asking $300 per square.
Our sources now say a lease is, in fact, out with a new eatery and the deal should be done soon.
But in a new twist, Donato says he sold La Mangeoire Friday to French partners Eric Cerato and Christophe Perrin, who plan to keep it going.
All of which is as clear as murky onion soup.