Amrich optimistic on beating the market.

Quad-C Management, a private equity firm, has signed a 5,500 s/f deal to lease the entire thirty-eighth floor of 444 Madison Avenue for ten-years.

Paul Amrich an executive vice president at the real estate services firm CB Richard Ellis who leads a team of brokers that handles leasing at 444 Madison Avenue said that the building's landlord, the real estate fund Westbrook Partners, had attracted the deal despite an increasingly slow market by offering various concessions and making improvements to the property. When talks for the deal began a few months ago and the crisis that has gripped the financial industry and economy subsequently worsened, Westbrook Partners moved to sweeten its offer to keep the lease from withering.

Quad-C will still pay in the $80s per square foot for the space, healthy rents amid what appears to be a retrenchment of rates, but will receive a free buildout from the landlord and a longer period of free rent.

Westbrook will spend $80 per square foot demolishing the offices on the floor, which had until recently been partitioned among three separate tenants, and outfit it with a brand new, high end office installation Amrich said. The cost of constructing the space and the period of free rent will essentially wipe out income from the space for more than a year.

But it also saved the deal from going bad at a time when few tenants are committing to deals and installed a tenant that will pay rents with a face rate that improves the value of the building, something that landlords have been increasingly eager to do amid the credit crunch and the liquidity and value issues the debt problems have created for real estate assets.

Amrich also said that replacing a space that had once been home to three tenants with one offered operational benefits for Westbrook because it streamlined administration and accounting work for the space.

Amrich said that the building is currently nearly fully leased, but that midway through next year a roughly 50,000 s/f space will open up comprising the entire ninth and tenth floors and part of the eighth. That space could be facing an even tougher market.

Many economists say that the economic problems facing the country will worsen next year and brokers have said that it will be a time when most tenants will focus on hunkering down and weathering the storm, putting off all but the most urgent real estate decisions for hopefully sunnier days; a period of slow activity that could mean tough times for the city's brokerage industry.

But Amrich says that he sees opportunity ahead.

"I think that the first half of 2009 is going to be challenging," Amrich said. "But hopefully by the fourth quarter we'll have hit a bottom and at that point I think that there are going to be a lot of tenants who have rolling leases who will want to come to the table and lock in aggressive rents."

Amrich also said that Westbrook has pumped money into renovating 444 Madison Avenue and that the improvements have attracted tenants. During downturns in the market, leasing experts say that tenants often look to secure quality space that if not a bargain, is still cheaper than commensurate offices during stronger periods in the market, rather than taking cut rate space of lower quality.

Among the improvements Westbrook has made is work that will be done by next month to expand and reface the lobby. The mezzanine level of the building, a space that is often difficult to lease in office buildings was used to raise the lobby's ceiling heights to forty feet. The space was also widened by about fifteen feet.

Amrich, a broker who worked at the firm Cushman & Wakefield before moving to CBRE, has focused on landlord representation in leasing transactions.

At 1140 Avenue of the Americas, another building he handles the agency work for, Amrich said that a deal is nearly done for an 8,000 s/f, seven-year lease of a portion of the building's eighth floor. Again the tenant is a financial services firm but because the lease has not yet been signed, Amrich said that he couldn't yet identify the tenant.

Refits for the deal were in the $70s per square foot.

Like at 444 Madison, 1140 Avenue of the Americas' landlord, a partnership between Stellar Management and Rockpoint, have put a significant sum into renovating the property, about $40 million to redo the building's lobby, elevators and glass facade among other improvements.

Amrich has perhaps his most high profile leasing assignment at 510 Madison Avenue, a building being developed by Macklowe Properties that currently is entering the final phase of construction.

Begun during the soaring heights of the commercial rental market in Manhattan, the building was designed to woo high-flying investment firms who could shell out triple figure rents for its exclusive spaces.

That market has appeared to deteriorate rapidly after a historic upheaval on Wall Street and the devastating blow the credit crunch has dealt the business model of highly leveraged returns that most of the investment industry ran on.

So far, 510 Madison has only attracted a single tenant.

But Amrich was optimistic that the property would draw tenants and said that Macklowe Properties was willing to offer $100 per square foot office installations to those that did deals.

Such a concession would appear to be pivotal to the building's leasing effort. Brokers familiar with the property say that one of the biggest hurdles it has faced is that the unbuilt condition of its office units would tack an significant additional cost to already pricey space at a time when tenant demand for such a luxurious offering to begin with has nearly evaporated.

But Amrich said that the two deals he has just completed are evidence that there are investment firms still on firm footing after the cataclysms that have shaken the U.S. financial system. And unlike in previous months when the closest thing Amrich could offer tenants interested in the stunning building's space were computer renderings of the property and tours of its construction site, the building's lobby is now almost complete. The space is said to be among the most striking lobbies in the city and allowing potential tenants to view the space has become a much more potent selling tool.

Amrich said the lobby is twenty five feet high and clad in limestone. The elevator cuts, the measure of the perimeter of stone around the elevator doors, is a generous ten and a half feet, giving the entryway a feeling of grandeur.

"Macklowe Properties is known for its aesthetics," Amrich said. "The type of lighting, the limestone, it's very museum-like. Tenants now are getting the chance to appreciate what it's like to be in space of this quality because we can take them in and show them around."

The building will be ready for occupancy next May and Amrich said that his team is trading paper with three or four tenants potentially interested in doing deals.