Commercial real estate investment management firm Pembrook Capital Management has provided a $47.1 million, 24-month fixed-rate loan to recapitalize 100 11th Street in Manhattan’s Chelsea neighborhood.

The condominiums have been completed and 26 of 54 units sold. The loan was closed within three weeks from the date the owners signed the loan application.

100 11th Street is a 23-story tower designed by French architect Jean Nouvel. It sits at the intersection of 19th Street and the West Side Highway along the Hudson River.

“We are very pleased to be able to play a pivotal role in the ongoing success of such a beautiful addition to the Manhattan skyline,” Pembrook founder and CEO Stuart Boesky said when announcing the news. He added that the transaction was originated by Los Angeles-based employee Jonathan Schurgin, who worked with Meridian Capital to make the deal happen.

Pembrook provides capital to developers and owners of real estate on a national basis through the acquisition and/or origination of real estate debt and equity. The firm also participates in the distressed debt markets.

As part of its relocation from Woburn, Mass., Kiva Systems has leased 163,000 square feet for eight years at 300 Riverpark Drive in North Reading, Mass. Jointly owned by Divco West and Taurus Investment Holdings, the building was acquired in September 2008 along with its adjacent neighbor, 400 Riverpark Drive. Together the two total 359,000 square feet.

David Pergola and Jason Levendusky of CB Richard Ellis represented Divco West and Taurus, while Brooks Murphy and Sean Lynch of Jones Lang LaSalle represented Kiva.

“When we acquired this property, we saw tremendous value in its leasing profile and location,” Divco managing director James Teng said when announcing the news. “This has been borne out by Kiva’s decision to move here.”

The property is situated on 34.3 acres a quarter of a mile from Interstate 93 and 16 miles north of downtown Boston. Other tenants include Crowe Paradis and Teradyne.

The Christian Science Board of Directors at The First Church of Christ, Scientist, has revealed a draft of a revitalization plan for the Christian Science Plaza in Boston, home to the church’s global headquarters. The proposal includes plans for the development of 950,000 square feet of residential and commercial facilities.

Surrounded by Boston’s Back Bay, Prudential, South End and Fenway neighborhoods, the Plaza encompasses 14.5 acres and offers 10 acres of open space that is accessible to the public. Among the property’s seven existing buildings are two centerpiece structures, the iconic Original Mother Church, built in 1894 and the Extension church, which was developed in 1906. As per the proposal, all existing buildings will remain intact.

The goal of the revitalization endeavor is threefold. One facet of involves the enhancement of the site’s open space by reopening the historical pathway leading to the Original Mother Church with the creation of a pedestrian crossing through–not over–the reflecting pool. Another goal of the plan is to increase the property’s environmental sustainability through a variety of means, including the planting of additional trees to and grass to reduce the urban heat effect.

Real estate development, however, is the key part of the revitalization plan. The church will make better use of the property’s underutilized space with the construction of new buildings totaling as much approximately 950,000 square feet. A site near the intersection of Belvidere and Dalton streets and another site off Huntington Avenue have been identified for development.

Two buildings are expected to sprout from the Belvidere/Dalton Site, creating residential units, a hotel, ground-level retail space and, if the market demands, office space. Currently, Boston has no shortage of office space. According to a report by real estate services firm Grubb & Ellis Co., the average office vacancy rate in the Boston area reached 14.4 percent in the second quarter. At the Huntington Site, the Church will erect a single, 150,000-square-foot residential building that will include affordable housing, which, unlike office space, is always in demand.

The organization has outlined the many public benefits of the new development projects, including additional affordable housing, greater street-level activity with the addition of new retail offerings, increased tax revenue and the creation of temporary construction jobs and permanent positions.

“The Church is proud to be part of Boston’s progressive vision and noble history,” Mary Trammell, Chair of the Board of Directors, noted in a prepared statement, “and to continue a tradition of contributing to this City’s beauty, inspiration, and progress.”

The New York Daily News and U.S. News & World Report have moved their headquarters to the 25-story 4 New York Plaza, which is located at the corner of Water and Broad streets in the city’s financial district. The two will occupy two entire floors comprising 100,000 square feet.

Four New York Plaza has nearly 1.1 million square feet of Class A space, located on two acres. The building features floor plates of 50,000 square feet and is 75 percent occupied by JPMorgan Chase.

CB Richard Ellis’ Howard Fiddle and Bradley Gerla represented the building’s owner, an affiliate of Harbor Group International L.L.C. The tenant was represented by Cushman & Wakefield’s John Cefaly and Michael Burgio.

The New York Daily News and U.S. News & World Report are currently located at 450 W. 33rd St. in the Hudson Yards area. They are expected to move to 4 New York Plaza by July 2011.

When announcing the news. Mortimer Zuckerman, chairman and publisher of the New York Daily News and chairman and editor-in-chief of the U.S. News & World Report, called the building “first-rate accommodations in the heart of the city’s financial district with superb amenities.”

Renee Lewis has been named head of Hudson Realty Capital L.L.C.’s asset management department. Currently the managing director of the department, Hudson is based in Manhattan and is a real estate fund manager specializing in middle-market investing.

Lewis will oversee strategy and execution on all Hudson’s debt and equity positions along with managing the firm’s asset management professionals and systems. She will remain a member of Hudson’s management committee, working to determine the company’s strategic direction.

She joined Hudson as a principal in 2006 and has been associated with it since its inception in 2002. Previously Lewis was founder and president of Questor, where she was responsible for oversight of due diligence and underwriting services for more than $30 billion in non-performing and performing real estate loans.

“Throughout her distinguished career, Renee Lewis has demonstrated outstanding deal analysis and risk mitigation experience,” Hudson managing director and founding member David Loo said when announcing the news. “She has contributed significantly towards Hudson’s ability to negotiate the current volatile market conditions.”

Courtesy Flickr Creative Commons user midweekpost

Better times are afoot for the Manhattan commercial real estate market, according to Cushman & Wakefield. The firm today released second-quarter statistics showing that the vacancy rate declined to 10.8 percent in June from 11.6 percent in March.

That decline dovetails with the strongest quarter for new leasing activity in Manhattan since the third quarter of 2006 – 6.9 million square feet of new office leases were signed, bringing the midyear total to 12.6 million square feet. That’s up a whopping 98 percent year over year.

Manhattan’s Class A vacancy rate dropped to 11.6 percent in June from 12.6 percent at the end of the first quarter, while the overall Midtown Manhattan vacancy rate declined to 11.5 from 12.6 percent. Those figures entail all sectors of real estate.

“In Midtown, the market has clearly trended from stabilization to recovery over the past six months,” C&W managing director of research for the New York metro region Ken McCarthy said when announcing the news.

The quarter’s top five leases included a 380,000-square-foot renewal and expansion for Jones Apparel Group at 1411 Broadway, a 378,304-square-foot new lease for Proskauer Rose at 11 Times Square, a 352,000-square-foot renewal for Willkie Farr & Gallagher at 787 Seventh Ave., a 280-square-foot new lease for Local Union 32BJ at 620 Avenue of the Americas and a 260,994-square-foot new lease for Tiffany at 200 Fifth Ave.

New York Colliers held its first annual Global Leadership Summit in Manhattan recently. The three-day meeting, which brought together clients and Colliers brokers from all over the world, concluded with a talk by best-selling author Malcolm Gladwell at the Jazz at Lincoln Center theater.

Colliers International has undertaken recently a rebranding and investment campaign to combine its real estate experts worldwide and service lines under one banner. Under this model, local Colliers brokers continue to own real equity in the company.

In late April, Colliers International combined operations and global real estate services platforms with FirstService Real Estate Advisors, which also began operating as Colliers International, forming one of the world’s largest commercial real estate services organizations.

Colliers’ recent Global Leadership Summit consisted of high-level strategy sessions and client meetings. Douglas Frye, global CEO of Colliers International, introduced Gladwell, author of such books as “Blink” and “Tipping Point.” Frye said that the investment sales industry would need a different approach in the next three years.

“Our efforts towards becoming the market leader in the United States are beginning to pay dividends,” said Dylan Taylor, CEO for Colliers International in the U.S.

Courtesy Flickr Creative Commons user morrissey

Jones Lang LaSalle this week found that Class A office vacancy rates in New York tumbled in all submarkets during the second quarter of 2010, with the Midtown and Downtown submarkets seeing rental rates nearly unchanged.

Vacancy rates dropped amongst all property types in Midtown, where the overall vacancy rate fell to 13.2 percent at mid-2010, a drop of 3 percent from the overall vacancy rate of 13.6 percent in the first quarter. Class A vacancy rates fell to 13.4 percent over the second quarter, down 3.4 percent from the previous quarter’s 13.9 percent.

Class B vacancies also fell, tumbling to 12.8 percent from 13.2 percent in the first quarter. Moreover, average asking rates for Class A space in Midtown remained nearly unchanged, posting an average rate of $64.25 per square foot at mid-2010, down just 1 cent from the Class A rate of $64.26 per square foot in the first quarter.

“Leasing activity is up considerably over this past year, while the number of large blocks of space coming back to the market has slowed,” JLL vice president and director of research for the New York office James Delmonte said in a prepared statement. “With demand finally outweighing supply, vacancy levels improved in some submarkets, leading to positive absorption for the overall market.”

The life sciences industry continues to be one of the few businesses that are eagerly seeking commercial real estate space. Dublin-based Shire Plc, which maintains the U.S. headquarters of its Human Genetic Therapies (Shire HGT) unit in Cambridge, Mass., has ended its hunt for space to accommodate company growth with the acquisition of Lexington Technology Park in Lexington, Mass. The global biopharmaceutical concern paid Patriot Partners L.L.C. $165 million in cash for the 96-acre campus, which offers ample room for growth.

The former home of Raytheon Global Headquarters, Lexington Technology Park is located at 123 Patriot Way, about 15 miles from Boston and 10 miles from Shire’s current home in Cambridge. The premier biotechnology compound of office and lab space and 40 acres of preserved open space had been undergoing redevelopment at the hands of Patriot Partners, the partnership between Framingham, Mass.-based Atlantic Management Corp., Concord, Mass.-based Mohawk Partners L.L.C. and New York City-headquartered O’Connor Capital Partners that acquired the property in 2003.

Commencing its search for larger accommodations in 2008, Shire did consider areas in the Carolinas and Rhode Island for its expansion, but the company ultimately settled on Lexington Technology Park for a bevy of reasons.

“We decided Massachusetts has the wealth of talent that we need, a lot of our peers are in the area, and we were offered great tax incentives to stay in the state,” Jessica Cotrone, Director of Communications with Shire, told CPE.

Additionally, Shire had already taken a shine to Lexington Technology Park. In 2007, the company began relocating some of its staff from Cambridge to the campus in order to address immediate space demands. Prior to the acquisition of the property, Shire had been leasing three buildings totaling 280,000 square feet and had developed a 200,000-square-foot manufacturing plant–recently completed–on a parcel of land the company already owned. “It made better sense to purchase the entire property so we could have contiguous space in one location,” Cotrone added.

Now, Shire owns Lexington Tech Park’s buildings and all of its land, which can accommodate an additional 570,000 square feet under a current permit; 170,000 square feet of that potential space is already in the construction phase. Commercial real estate services firm Richards Barry Joyce & Partners represented Shire in the transaction, while Cushman & Wakefield stood in for Patriot Partners.

The Boston area appears to be in little danger of falling from the top spot of the biggest life sciences hubs in the U.S. Boston’s commercial real estate market hardly escaped the ravages of the country’s financial crisis, so the pace of development activity is sluggish, to say the least, except in the biotech industry. In June, Alexandria Real Estate Equities received final zoning approval for the approximately $560 million Binney Street Project, a 1.7 million-square-foot mixed-use office and laboratory development in East Cambridge. Additionally, Boston Properties is developing 350,000 square feet for Biogen Idec in Weston, and Cubist Pharmaceuticals is expanding its digs in Lexington by 110,000 square feet.

Andaz Hotel

The number of hotels in Lower Manhattan has tripled since the 9/11 terrorist attacks, the Alliance for Downtown New York has found. The organization said this week that the number of rooms in their district – Lower Manhattan south of Chambers Street – has increased by more than 60 percent in that time.

In 2010, the 169-room World Center Hotel, the 112-room Holiday Inn Express, and the 253-room Andaz have opened. The 220-room W New York – Downtown & Residences is expected to open within weeks, bringing the total of hotels in the area to 16 and 3,693 combined rooms. Another three hotels with a combined 680 rooms are also under construction.

“The volume of investment pouring into downtown’s hospitality industry is further proof that Lower Manhattan is now New York City’s most desirable and dynamic location,” Alliance president Elizabeth Berger said when announcing the news.

The Alliance estimates that nearly 6 million people visit Lower Manhattan annually, and that the area’s hotels were 86 percent occupied in the fourth quarter of 2009.