Firms take 187,000 s/f on E52nd.

Two firms have taken the bulk of a block of sublease space being offered at 55 East 52nd Street by Aon, who left the building to go back downtown at the end of April.

Financial advisory and investment firm, Evercore Partners, subleased 125,000 s/f on floors 35 through 38. Law firm Duff Phelps, which had been perusing space at 1166 Avenue of the Americas in recent months, signed for floors 30 and 31 or 62,000 s/f.

CBRE global chairman Steve Sigel represented Evercore Partners and CBRE senior vice president David Hollander represented Duff Phelps. CBRE executive vice president Kenneth Rapp handled the deal for Aon.

While rents were unavailable, they likely are on par with what a tenant would pay for a direct lease with the landlord because the subleases stretch to 2023, a term that is considered very long for sublease space.

Evercore, which already occupies 55 East 52nd Street's 43rd floor, plans to move into two of the four floors immediately, but Siegel said that the firm will sublease out the other two for a very short term until it can grow into them.

The firm's taking of more space than it will immediately occupy is an example of the kind of aggressive measures tenants are being forced to employ to fulfill their future space needs in a market that continues to tighten unrelentingly.

"I think they'll take back one floor after around three years and the other after maybe five years," Siegel said.

The deals absorb a significant portion of the 275,000 s/f Aon vacated to go to 199 Water Street in a relocation that generated much fanfare. Aon had been a tenant at the Twin Towers when the buildings were destroyed in the attacks of 9/11 and its return to Lower Manhattan was seen as a symbolically charged sign of the area's resurgence as an office district.

So important was the Aon lease perceived to the health of the downtown market that the New York City Office of the Comptroller, which already was close to a deal for the space at 199 Water Street, stepped aside to facilitate the transaction.

Aon wound up subleasing 220,000 s/f in the building that was being offered by Wachovia, which has shed massive blocks of space downtown that it had inherited as a result of a 2003 merger with Prudential Securities.

Rapp represented Aon in its downtown move and is handling the roughly 91,372 s/f of remaining space at 55 East 52nd Street that Aon is seeking to sublease. Located on the triangle shaped towers floors 32-34, the space was built out by Aon and is ready for immediate occupancy.

Aon may not be the only tenant at the Fisher Brothers owned 55 East 52nd Street to pack up and leave for downtown. Commercial and investment bank ABN AMRO, which according to MrOfficeSpace.com occupies three floors in the building, is searching for 150,000 s/f in Lower Manhattan and is said to be closely considering 7 World Trade Center.