Robert Alexander.

The City and State better enact the changes quick needed to increase the REAP employee benefit package from $1,000 per head before it loses another Chase. The lender and large city real estate owner is on its way with more than 1,900 employees and "several hundred consultants" to LeFrak's 600-acre, $10 billion Newport project in Jersey City with a requirement of 1.2 million square-feet of space. Robert Alexander and Lewis Miller at Insignia/ESG represented Chase, while Cushman & Wakefield handled the negotiations for Newport.

It is expected to move into a brand new building known as Newport Centre V of approximately 804,000 square feet which is already under construction. While speculative, like the others LeFrak has constructed prior to finding tenants, it already has steel ordered and on the way. It is likely that LeFrak will also begin construction on another building for the Chase spillover.

Newport already houses Recruit USA in the 455,000 square foot 14-story Recruit/Newport Financial Center I. The 36-story, 1 million square foot Newport Tower has tenants including First Chicago Trust, USA Networks and the FDIC. The Paine Webber Building, a 567,318 square-foot 14 story tower will soon open to tenants Paine Webber, Cigna and US Trust. Newport Office Center IV, a 788,384 square foot, 22-story office stores will be known as the Insurance Services Office Building in which ISO has leased 390,419 square feet. In May, Knight/Trimark Group signed on for approximately 266,000 square feet.

A decade ago Chase agreed to build at Metro Tech in Downtown Brooklyn where a 1 million square foot site is still available in MetroTech 9. But city developers have been complaining for several years that New Jersey benefit packages are much better - and that the city would be losing its large corporate employers.

Already, many major companies and financial services firms have acted to make the Jersey coastline at Harborside Financial Center, and Newport a stunning alternative with fast ferry and PATH train service.

"It's the tax incentives that New Jersey was able to give, and it's incredible that the city was asleep at the switch," said Gil Robinov a senior vice president with CB Commercial who is representing Forest City Ratner in the leasing of the upcoming new 9 Metro Tech, and for 250,000 square-feet on the top of the new courthouse.

"At Metro Tech we could have given them 1 million square-feet new, with all the bells and whistles, for the mid-$30s," Robinov continued. "Chase has a responsibility to remain in New York. There are people that work for them living in Queens and Brooklyn and the Bronx who are unable to commute to New Jersey. And I'm disappointed that the City al[owed them to leave. It's an embarrassment to me, as it should be to the Mayor to lose this employer. The city has strong relations with and many accounts with Chase," he added.