Good Sports: Big Leases in The Big Apple

Two of the nation’s leading professional sports leagues are deepening their roots in Manhattan with major office leases in Midtown. Major League Baseball (MLB) and the National Basketball Association (NBA) will occupy space in office towers about a home run’s length from each other. 

MLB will lease about 400,000 sq. ft. (37,120 sq. m.) at 1271 Avenue of the Americas, or Sixth Avenue, in 2018 and will occupy the space the following year. It’s the same space Time, Inc., occupied for several decades before relocating. The building is part of Rockefeller Center on the west side of Sixth Avenue; most of the iconic Art Deco development is east of Sixth, fronting Fifth Avenue. 

MLB will occupy six floors in the 2.1 million-sq.-ft. (195,000-sq.-m.) tower and will have exclusive use of an eighth-floor outside terrace. Batting cages, perhaps. Completed in 1959, 1271 is undergoing a $600-million redevelopment.

The NBA, meanwhile, just completed a 175,000-sq.-ft. (16,260-sq.-m.) lease extension through 2035 at 645 Fifth Avenue — Olympic Tower, which opened in 1976. The mixed-use, 51-story tower was developed by Aristotle Onassis and sold for $1 billion to Oxford Properties Group and Crown Acquisitions in two transactions, in 2012 and 2015. Slam dunk: If you have to ask what a condo at this swanky address goes for …

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the Empire State, some minor-league-by-comparison projects are under way — they’re major league to the communities that won them. They include:

• Bucher Emhart Glass Manufacturing Inc., which produces testing and inspecting equipment used by glass container manufacturers around the world, has its new, nearly 107,000-sq.-ft. (9,940-sq.-m.) manufacturing facility in Big Flats, Chemung County. The company’s expansion will retain more than 100 jobs in the Southern Tier region.
• Metallized Carbon Corporation, or Metcar®, broke ground on a new 15,000-sq.-ft. (1,395-sq.-m.) factory in Fallsburg, where 10 new full-time jobs will be created. The new Sullivan County facility will manufacture products for the company’s Metcar Aerospace Materials Division. The company will also preserve 117 jobs at its factory in the Village of Ossining, in Westchester County.
• Roth Industries, Inc., a German-owned manufacturer of environmentally friendly and energy-efficient products, will expand its production, storage and distribution operations in Watertown, Jefferson County. The company’s expansion will result in both new and retained jobs, with $425,000 in Excelsior Jobs Program tax credits. The expansion will support the immediate retention of four at-risk jobs and 42 statewide, as well as the creation of 12 new full-time positions.