New tenants poised to sign 7 WTC deals.

It's no wonder Silverstein seemed so decisive and maybe even a little eager in nixing the deal for the top 200,000 s/f at 7 World Trade Center with the Chinese real estate firm Vantone after it could not produce a necessary letter of credit.

According to sources, his CB Richard Ellis leasing team already has tenants lined up to take as much space or more. Law firm Darby & Darby is said to be wrapping up a deal to take two of the tower's 40,000 s/f floors, 41 and 42, for rents starting at $53 per s/f. While that lease has been reported, Real Estate Weekly has learned of three new tenants close to taking an additional 160,000 s/f, deals that, if completed, would bring occupancy in the building past the halfway point.

Financial firm, Georgeson, which currently has its offices at RFR Realty's sleek downtown skyscraper 17 State Street, is in negotiations to take 40,000 s/f, or one floor, as is Mansueto Ventures, a publishing company just established by mutual fund tycoon, Joe Mansueto, that acquired ailing business magazines, Fast Company and Inc. in May.

The New York Mortgage Company, whose lease at 1301 Avenue of the Americas was bought out according to brokers by an expanding Lehman Brothers in recent months, is considering two floors in the 52-story building.

If completed, the deals would bolster what has already been a remarkable turnaround for 7 WTC. Just a few months ago the 1.7 million s/f tower seemed to be having trouble securing commitments beyond a paltry 100,000 s/f, a fact that added to the controversy at Ground Zero by generating doubt whether the site's planned 10 million s/f of office space could be absorbed amid what seemed like a slack downtown market--uncertainty that thrust the development of the Freedom Tower into question. Since then, 7 WTC and the downtown market overall have made a quick, yet convincing comeback.

While downtown tallied deal after deal, a streak of activity in which nearly every large block of its class A space was absorbed in recent months, 7 WTC landed a large tenant of its own, leasing floors 13-27 to Moody's Investors Service. A source at Silverstein Properties revealed that the 600,000 s/f deal, first reported by Real Estate Weekly, could grow even larger because Moody's has expansion options totaling as much as 200,000 s/f, rights that, if exercised, could bring it to occupy almost half of the building.

Sources say that Vantone's departure may have been aided by the deal with Moody's because it freed up more of the government incentives that were created to stimulate leasing activity at 7 WTC. Incentives were allotted for the first 750,000 s/f of leases in the building, 200,000 s/f of which were absorbed by the Vantone deal. Because 100,000 s/f was leased before the deal with Vantone, it had been estimated that Moody's would be able to receive, at most, incentives for 450,000 s/f of the space it took. Now that Vantone is gone, observers say Moody's will be able to grab subsidies for its remaining 150,000 s/f.

A Silverstein rep denied that Moody's would now receive more subsidies and claimed that the leasing negotiations with Vantone had dissolved well after a deal had already been hammered out with Moody's.