Morgan Stanley takes 64,000 s/f at NY Plaza.

Just a few weeks after taking all of 522 Fifth Avenue in one of the biggest leasing deals of the year so far, Morgan Stanley is back in expansion mode. The financial firm subleased 64,000 s/f from Wachovia at One New York Plaza last week, a building where it already has roughly 680,000 s/f of space. A Jones Lang LaSalle team composed of Peter Riguardi, John Wheeler, and Chris Krantz represented Wachovia in the transaction.

Morgan Stanley entered the building, the southernmost office skyscraper in Manhattan, with a 460,000 s/f lease in February 2005. Then in May of that year, it took another three floors totaling 220,000 s/f in the 50 story, 2.5 million s/f building to accommodate, according to company spokesman Andrew Walton, the firm's plan to add 600 jobs downtown.

All of Morgan Stanley's space at One New York Plaza is being subleased from Wachovia, which inherited 800,000 s/f in the building when its securities division merged with Prudential Securities in 2003, a time when the downtown market was in a lull and big blocks of vacant space were sitting fallow. Wachovia has offices in the building but decided that instead of absorbing a major chunk of the space for its own use, it would instead move much of its newly expanded downtown operation to midtown architectural landmark the Seagram Building, where it leased roughly 250,000 s/f.

The deal comes less than a month after Morgan Stanley leased 600,000 s/f at 522 Fifth Avenue to house operations for its growing asset management group, an arm of the financial giant's business that focuses primarily on mutual fund management and wealth management for ultra high net worth individuals and that currently occupies 10 floors at 1221 Avenue of the Americas. Sources say that the financial firm will pay $80 per s/f for the new space at 522 Fifth Avenue. Morgan Stanley represented itself in the leasing negotiations with landlord Broadway Partners, which purchased the 23-story building at the beginning of May for $420 million from a partnership between Stellar Management and Rockpoint Group.

Morgan Stanley plans to keep its space at 1221 Avenue of the Americas, but Andrea Flattery, a spokeswoman for the firm, said that it is not yet clear just what offices within the company will move in. The asset management group plans to move into 522 Fifth Avenue in the first quarter of 2007.