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A major new lease from a financial firm is rare in New York City these days, especially around embattled Wall Street. So yesterday’s announcement that a financial firm will scoop up a large block of trophy tower space in Downtown Manhattan came as a pleasant surprise. In a sign of the times, however, the new arrival will not be a U.S.-based firm. Instead, the tenant will be a German investment bank–WestLB AG. The company will take the top three floors at 7 World Trade Center for a total of 129,000 square feet. Completed in 2006 by Silverstein Properties Inc., the…

A trio of hospitality veterans have teamed up to form Fairwood Capital L.L.C., a private equity fund that will acquire upscale full-service and select properties. Ed Ansbro, Robert Solmson and Richard Reiss will serve as the hotel investment fund’s principals. Ansbro is the former senior vice president for Memphis-based REIT Equity Inns Inc. Equity Inns and its 130-hotel portfolio were picked up by Whitehall Street Global Real Estate L.P. for $2.2 billion in 2007. Solmson is the former chairman & CEO of Memphis-based RFS Hotel Investors Inc., a publicly held REIT he formed in 1993 that was acquired by CNL…

ProLogis has leased 205,000 square feet near Baltimore to PrimeSource Building Products, a building materials distributor. PrimeSource will occupy the space at Hickory Ridge Distribution Center, located northeast of Baltimore in Aberdeen. The firm will use the space to distribute product to its customers regionally in the Northeast. The company now occupies approximately 338,000 square feet with ProLogis in both Maryland and Texas. Hickory Ridge Distribution Center is located off of Highway 40, equidistant from the Interstate 95 interchanges at Aberdeen Throughway and Riverside Parkway.

With major retailers announcing same-store sales results from the previous month, job cuts and company mergers dominate financial news this morning. More economic reports will be released today including a weekly jobless claims report, an October factory orders report that is anticipated to show a drop of at least 4.5 percent and major retailer reports – including Wal-Mart – showing November same-store sales, CNNMoney.com reported. On the job front, more numbers will be added to the unemployment figures. United Airlines plans to furlough 1,088 workers at bases around the country, according to the Associated Press. The airline also plans to…

Four commercial real estate veterans–Henry Gallin, Michael Glick, Frank Sullivan and Ray O’Keefe–have formed a national consulting service that will advise investors, lenders, corporate users, owners, government agencies and service companies in formulating and execute real estate strategies. The new company, Gallin Glick Sullivan O’Keefe, will work on a national basis, providing consulting services across all commercial real estate classes and disciplines. “We want to work at the highest level, to help clients execute their goals,” O’Keefe, one of the principals, said. Services provided could take a number of forms, such as acquisition and disposition consulting, leasing services and debt…

Has the government hit on a bailout method that works? At least partly? Fed intervention to lower mortgage rates might allow some homeowners (those with good credit) to refinance their way out of high post-teaser rates. “After Federal Reserve actions to increase liquidity in the mortgage market, interest rates for fixed-rate mortgages took a dive,” said Frank Nothaft, Freddie Mac vice president & chief economist, in a statement this morning. That move led to a rush to refinance last week among mortgage-holders, as reported by CPN yesterday. Now there are indications that the federal government wants to apply more of…

Nearly six months after announcing a pending agreement, Washington Real Estate Investment Trust has closed on the acquisition of 2445 M Street, a Class A, nine-story, 290,000-square-foot office building in Washington, D.C., for $181.4 million. WRIT bought the building, located in the West End submarket between Georgetown and the city’s Central Business District, from Broadway Partners, a New York City-based private equity firm that has invested heavily in Class A office properties in recent years. The property, which also has a two-story underground parking garage, is fully leased by two long-term tenants, The Advisory Board and the law firm of…

Riverstone Residential has been awarded the management of more than 15,000 apartment units in the portfolio of BlackRock Realty Advisors Inc., the real estate equity arm of BlackRock Inc. Under terms of the agreement, Riverstone will assume management responsibilities for the units–spread across 62 properties–from former manager Metric Property Management Inc., a wholly-owned subsidiary of BlackRock Realty. Employees of Metric will be offered positions with Riverstone in order to facilitate a smooth transition for residents. “Our primary objectives in the selection of Riverstone were to provide stability to our portfolio throughout the transition and take advantage of Riverstone’s value-added strategies…

It doesn’t seem like the commercial real estate business can get much leverage these days. On Tuesday, Citigroup Inc. indicated its intention to raise $5.5 billion through a debt offering under the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.’s temporary guarantee program, CNNMoney.com reported. The $5.5 billion in debt will be split among three bonds, one of which matures in two years while the other two mature in three years by offering bonds through the government’s Temporary Liquidity Guarantee program, which was created Oct. 14 to help prop up the troubled financial system. CNNMoney.com stated that other financial institutions including Goldman Sachs Group…

The Institute for Supply Management, which released its manufacturing index for November recently (those numbers were bad), has more bad news for the nation today: U.S. service industries, which constitute about nine-tenths of all domestic economic activity, contracted in November. The index of non-manufacturing businesses, according to the ISM, fell to 37.3, down from 44.4 in October. Anything less than 50 indicates contraction, and the November figure is the lowest ever recorded, though the index has only been around since 1997. Another set of numbers released today offers no comfort either. The ADP National Employment Index, published by payroll processor…