Stellar is only show in town at 522 Fifth.

Despite the consensus among real estate brokerages that big-block leasing deals, especially of class A space, have entered a slowdown, Stellar Management is confident it can find a tenant for 522 Fifth Avenue. A tenant --as in one tenant.

Having acquired the building last week from JP Morgan Chase for an undisclosed sum, Stellar plans to market the building as an ideal headquarters for financial institutions and is aiming to lease the entirety of its 575K s/f of class A offices to a single tenant. Robert Rosania, principal at Stellar, indicated that the building's uniqueness removes it from being in competition with fallow chunks of space in Midtown. According to Rosania, it's one of the only assets in the city right now that would allow a tenant to have an entire building to itself as well as signage rights on Fifth Avenue.

"There will be ample demand for this building," Rosania said. "There's really nothing else like it on the market."

JP Morgan Chase plans to move out of the building in the summer of 2006 and will relocate its facilities at 245 Park Avenue, where it has just subleased over 700K s/f of space. During its tenure as owner of the property, JP Morgan Chase modernized the 1960 building's amenities, redoing the lobby, facade, elevators and tech infrastructure.

Cushman & Wakefield's Mitchell Konsker has been tapped to handle the lease and said he will be seeking rents in the mid $70s. He noted a number of major banks that have offices on Fifth Avenue, Wachovia among them, could be potential tenants, but said that marketing for the property hadn't yet begun.

Rosania did concede that if he received an offer for part of the space, he would consider leasing the property to more than one tenant. Konsker stressed that the building would accept no more than three tenants.

"If there was a tenant that was interested in half the property, I certainly wouldn't close the door," Rosania said. "If there's one thing that I've learned in this business it's that you have to be flexible and mindful of other people's needs as well."

The building wasn't put on the market and the deal was struck directly between the buyer and seller. Stellar seemed to have an inside track on purchasing the property--which JP Morgan Chase had attempted to sell in 2002--after acquiring the land under the building in 2004 from a 24 member tenancy-in-common. Rosania revealed that that transaction was accomplished with a future purchase of the building in mind, but that he never imagined he would secure ownership of both just a year apart.

"I had hopes of merging the two interests, but I'd be lying if I said that I had thought we could have done it so quickly," Rosania said. "To get a building of this magnitude, we've been incredibly fortunate.

Rosania credited his lawyer, Rob Ivanhoe, with helping to secure the transaction for Stellar.