By Daniel Geiger
Two insurance companies are leasing space at 125 Broad Street, an office building in Lower Manhattan owned by the New Jersey based real estate investment trust Mack Cali.
CNA Financial Corporation is relocating from 40 Wall Street into about 80,000 s/f at 125 Broad.
Gen Re is taking about 56,000 s/f. The company, a reinsurance firm, is moving to 125 Broad from 199 Water Street and hasn’t yet finalized exactly how much space it will take. Sources familiar with the deal said that the firm may end up either committing to as much as 70,000 s/f or negotiating the options to expand to that in the future.
Details of the transactions, including what floors both companies were taking and how much rent they were negotiating to pay, were not immediately available, although asking rents and recent deals at 125 Broad are in the mid $30s per s/f, according to market sources.
Calls to Mack Cali, CNA Financial, and Gen Re were not returned by press time.
A large block of vacancy opened at the 1.3 million s/f building when Citibank vacated about 350,000 s/f there at the beginning of 2010, a period of slow leasing activity during the recession. That empty space has now been largely filled, a reflection on the city’s improving office market.
Earlier this year, the law firm Wilson Elser took a roughly 37,000 s/f space. Floors at 125 Broad range from about 36,000 s/f to 38,000 s/f apiece according to people with knowledge of the building.
Only one floor now remains empty, the third, which is about 37,000 s/f.
A leasing team from the real estate services firm CB Richard Ellis handles leasing at the property. Brokers at the company could not be reached for comment on the deals.
