Bargains down the block provide some rent relief.

To find relief from Midtown's skyrocketing rents, tenants can go to Lower Manhattan, to Jersey City, Brooklyn, and Long Island City. Or they can just go down the block.

Even as rents continue to rise in Midtown to historic highs, brokers say that affordable buildings still populate the district's side streets, often just steps away from the trophy towers that command Manhattan's highest rents. And while buildings with more affordable rents typically aren't of the quality nor do they have the amenities or prestige of a class A office building, they are making it possible for tenants who otherwise wouldn't be able to afford Midtown's rents to remain in the neighborhood.

Although Midtown's top flight office buildings have had little trouble finding tenants to continually up the rental ante by forking over for higher and higher rates, brokers say that there is a willingness among a growing pool of tenants to take advantage of the cheaper office space rather than relocate altogether to a less expensive office district.

"It's always amazed me the way, in this city, you can have a building with the highest rents in the city and you walk around the block and you have a building that gets a fraction of that in rent," said Josh Kuriloff, an executive vice president at Cushman & Wakefield.

Kuriloff and fellow C&W broker Mark Lauzon recently were named the agents of 6 West 48th Street, a building that will be an attractive option for tenants eager to remain in Midtown but who are seeking rents that are comparatively cheap in the district.

Only a block from Rockefeller Center, where office tenants now routinely pay rates in the triple digits, 6 West 48th Street has rents that start at around $50 per s/f. Such pricing is far higher than what a tenant would have to pay in the collection of cheaper markets that ring Manhattan and is roughly what Downtown's best office space commands, but is considered an inexpensive rate for a location that abuts one of the city's most prestigious office corridors.

Its niche as an affordable alternative suddenly popular among tenants, 6 West 48th Street was recently completely renovated by its owner, Robert Posner, who owns the real estate investment firm, Charter Management Group.

"Owners are seeing the value in their buildings because the market is getting so tight," Lauzon said. "So more old buildings are getting completely modernized because for the owner it makes economic sense given that these buildings are becoming so popular."

Roughly 45,000 s/f is available in the building. The Asian Corporate Council, a philanthropic arm of the Rockefeller family, recently completed a 7,500 s/f lease in the property, an example of how the building could be well suited for tenants who have space in Rockefeller Center or work closely with tenants who do.