BY AL BARBARINO

Massey Knakal Realty Services has arranged the $139 million sale of a portfolio that includes the Dunbar Manor apartment complex in West Harlem, The Commercial Observer has learned.

The monster residential portfolio, which consists of 1,084 units across 15 properties located throughout Northern Manhattan and the Upper West Side, generated what brokers called a “storm of interest.”

Bankruptcies and subsequent foreclosures on the properties led to much anticipation in the market, making the rare offering a “seamless” sell.

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BY BILLY GRAY

The Development Corporation for Israel is moving up the street to 641 Lexington Avenue after signing a 15-year, 25,000-square-foot lease at Rudin Management Company's 400,000-square-foot office tower.

The tenant, an international financial organization, will relocate from 575 Lexington Avenue during the first quarter of 2014. Rudin Vice President Robert Steinman represented ownership in-house. Colliers International Vice Chairman James Emden repped the tenant. Asking rents in the building are $55 a foot.

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BY GUS DELAPORTE

Huntsworth Health, a family of companies focused on the healthcare sector, has signed a 10-year, 15,600-square-foot lease for the entire 13th floor at Minskoff Equities’ 101 Avenue of the Americas, where asking rents are $70 per square foot.

The company’s evoke interaction agency, a healthcare marketing firm, will relocate from its 13,000-square-foot, two-floor space at 920 Broadway. The subsidiary, whose client roster includes Genentech and Pfizer, also operates offices in Philadelphia and Boston.

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BY CHRIS HAVENS

Echoing the fully international nature of the Brooklyn market, aptsandlofts.com recently leased several spaces on Union Avenue north of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway to retail tenants for new or enlarged businesses.

New Yorkers of Japanese, Chinese, South Asian, African and European descent took space at 568 Union Avenue to create bakeries, lounges, hair salons and restaurants. No wonder the market is strong—international retail is onto us!

Retail users have been swarming over the area, carefully choosing older buildings they can make cozy and cool. Modern space, if over 2,000 square feet, can be hard to lease. Most people come to Williamsburg for the atmosphere, not metal and glass.

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BY DAVID GREENE

In the summer of 1974, America was witnessing the complete disintegration of a presidency.

Richard Nixon and his cronies were caught in the middle of the Watergate scandal. The nation fixated on the subject for months, wishing that it would go away but returning every evening to learn more, a veritable habit we could not get rid of. Then on Aug. 7, the day before President Nixon would go on television and announce that he would be resigning from office, a 5'7" Frenchman named Philippe Petit walked a tightrope less than an inch wide between the two World Trade Center towers in New York. For a brief period, America had something else to think about.

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