BY DANIEL GEIGER

The advertising and media firm Publicis has signed a nearly 100,000-square-foot lease to relocate Manhattan offices to Long Island City.

The company, a large multinational firm that occupies hundreds of thousands of square feet in the city, is taking space at 27-01 Queens Plaza North in a sublease from the insurance firm MetLife.

According to people familiar with the deal, Publicis is doing the deal for the remainder of MetLife’s term on that portion of the space, a period that stretches another ten and a half years.

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BY DANIEL EDWARD ROSEN

Caramel Baby & Child, a British designer of luxury children's wear, has inked a 10-year lease to sell their tiny and trendy threads to the Upper East Side set at 1244 Madison Avenue, The Commercial Observer has learned.

The store will be taking an 800 square foot space that was previously occupied by Keesal & Mathews, a maker of home furnishings. Judson Realty LLC represented Caramel Baby & Child in the deal. Faith Hope Consolo and Joseph Aquino represented the 17 East 89th Tenants, the coop that runs the building.

Asking rents were $330 per square foot.

Situated near private schools like St. David's, Nightingale, Spence and Convent of the Sacred Heart , Ms. Consolo said Caramel Baby & Child was a suitable fit in a family friendly area of the Upper East Side.

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BY JOTHAM SEDERSTROM

When Forrest Solutions’ self-described Chief Happiness Officer Mitchell Weiner chose to relocate to 17,684 square feet at 19 West 44th Street, he also made a conscious decision to dramatically reimagine what a work space in Midtown Manhattan could be.

Indeed, with the help of Marc Spector and his architectural firm, the Spector Group, the temporary staffing business, which caters to the staffing needs of Fortune 500 companies, moved from what was an otherwise dreary, traditional space into one of the more ambitious offices in Manhattan.

After the jump, Mr. Spector reviews the furniture plans with The Commercial Observer last week and discussed what, exactly, drew Forrest Solutions to the ninth floor of 19 West 44th Street.After the jump, Mr. Spector reviews the furniture plans with The Commercial Observer last week and discussed what, exactly, drew Forrest Solutions to the ninth floor of 19 West 44th Street.

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BY JOTHAM SEDERSTROM

For those who saw signs of improvement in the market earlier this month, look again. While not necessarily worse than the previous reporting period, second-quarter office leasing was propped up primarily by a pair of big renewal deals inked for Viacom and Morgan & Stanley.

A closer look at the numbers, meanwhile, seem to suggest that leasing in nearly every asset class is down, down, down—not least of all in Midtown, where Class A office leasing plummeted by 50 percent.

With the help of Cushman & Wakefield’s first-quarter statistics, and the firm’s lead researcher Ken McCarthy,The Commercial Observertook a look at Manhattan’s three primary office markets and read between the lines to figure out what it means. After the jump, an annotated guide to office leasing in the second quarter.

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