L&L fine tunes plans to fill remaining space at 600 Third.

L&L Acquisitions has brought 600 Third Avenue, a building it purchased in partnership with GE Asset Management in July 2004, to near total occupancy with the recent announcements of two expansion deals with existing tenants in the building.

Last week L-3 Communications increased its presence in the 42-story, 500,000 s/f property to 65,345 s/f by leasing an additional 12,500 s/f floor. Court TV, one of the building's largest tenants, expanded as well in late November, adding 14,000 s/f. 95% leased, the building has only two vacant tower floors left. David Levinson, who along with Robert Lapidus founded the firm, said the space will soon be divided and pre-built to attract high end, but small space users. Asking rents for those spaces, which are located on the 27th and 31st floors, will be in the $55 psf range and Levinson expects they will attract law, accounting, and financial firms as well as hedge funds, which have made their mark as busy takers of small but high end space.

"I think it's important to have a mix of big and small tenants in a building," Levinson said. "Bringing in a smaller tenant can be like planting a seed, their business can grow and in the future they could end up taking more space. You incubate them."

L&L Acquisitions is planning a similar buildout program, but on a larger scale, at its Metropolitan Tower, a building whose office portion the firm owns in a joint venture. Anne Taylor has a 125,000 s/f lease in the building and pays rent until October 2006 even though it vacated its office space there months ago. Levinson said that once Anne Taylor's lease is up, L&L will refurbish much of the space and lease it out in various sized pieces.

"I think that we'll have some multi-floor tenants, we'll have some single floor tenants and then we'll also break up some of the floors," Levinson said. "We're going to build out one floor and see how that goes and take it from there.

With space race heating up in midtown for large chunks however, Levinson admitted that a hungry big block tenant could come in and change the firm's plans.

"It's absolutely possible that a big block tenant could come into this space," Levinson said. "I had thought in 2004, because '04 was such a monster leasing year, that by '06 we might be one of the few blocks of space of 100,000 s/f or more. '05 was a good year but it didn't tighten up quite as much, but what I'm hearing is that the possibility of a big tenant is back and we could rent this as one contiguous chunk."

Levinson also mentioned that the firm may convert the second and third floors of Metropolitan Tower into as much as 30,000 s/f of retail space, depending on the level interest such a plan elicits from retailers eager to have a presence on the busy 57th Street corridor. "Our plan would allow a retailer to have ground floor access and then an escalator to the second and third floor," Levinson said. "We could put together almost 30,000 s/f of new retail space on 57th street--that kind of opportunity just doesn't exist today."