BY DANIEL GEIGER

Joe Sitt reclined in his office wearing the sly little smile of someone who knows something more than we do.

“Another retailer that we represent asked us if we could find them a space in Tehran,” he said.

Mr. Sitt seemed fascinated, not appalled (Mr. Sitt’s family is Syrian Jewish) or the least bit bewildered by the request.

“So many of the European retailers are operating stores in Iran,” the head of Thor Equities explained to The Commercial Observer. “We’re a little bit in a bubble in the U.S. Adolfo, Desigual, Mango, Diesel, I don’t remember which ones, but two out of four already have stores there. [In] Saudi Arabia, Mango already has 50 stores there. I have another request for Equador. Zara wants more stores in Venezuela. I’ve had requests for Russia. Those are some of the examples that show you the world is changing.”

Mr. Sitt can relate to clients like these, which he caters to through a relatively new arm of his real estate empire, a brokerage business called Thor High Street that has been picking up steam, internationally, in recent months.

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BY DANIEL EDWARD ROSEN

He admits that he wants people to know him by his first name, not his last. But broker Jeff Buslik, the son of Adams & Company head James Buslik, is bringing youth and vigor to a brokerage firm (and family) that has been around in New York City for as long as The Helmsley Building. After he joined his dad’s firm in 2003, it took the now-32-year-old just three years to lease over 1 million square feet. Now a director at the firm, Mr. Buslik spoke to The Commercial Observer about Adams & Company’s new development: three exclusive leasing assignments at 5 West 37th Street, 385 Fifth Avenue and 390 Fifth Avenue, totaling 350,000 square feet of space.

The Commercial Observer: Would you say that these new leasing assignments can be seen as a new strategy for Adams & Company? Mr. Buslik: I am not going to say it’s necessarily a new strategy. I think what’s happening is we’ve been in business for almost 100 years and in order to get better, we need to keep expanding. We’ve been successful in continually looking for ways to expand our business, and I believe my youth and my energy have contributed to that.

How does that differ from how your family has conducted business in the past? My dad has been in the real estate business for 40 years. He and his partner, David Levy, purchased Adams & Company in 1999, and I arrived in 2003. I think prior to coming here, my dad and his brokers also did brokerage outside of their own buildings. But when they came here, the portfolio was significantly larger; the majority of their attention had to be spent on taking care of the buildings. So the tenant representation side was there, and producing, but it needed help to get to the next level.

And how does one go about taking it to the next level? What I did to get to the next step was I just pushed, I worked hard, I learned the market and really tried to convey to tenants that we were more than just landlords. By being landlords in part of our day-to-day life, we have a unique knowledge to help them navigate any and all transactions. What it has also spawned is that we’re getting looked at by other landlords as possible representatives for them. In the last couple of months, my team and I were hired by another owner in our neighborhood to represent three buildings of theirs that total over 350,000 square feet, which is an additional wing. That’s not just representing a tenant. That is representing another landlord. So those are two ways of growth for us.

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BY DANIEL EDWARD ROSEN

A sub-level printing space inside the former home of the New York Herald Tribune is available for sublease, and the brokers representing the landlord wants to place a similar user, officials told The Commercial Observer.

The 8,271-square-foot space at 230 West 41st Street, which also houses the City University of New York Graduate School of Journalism, is currently being occupied by Scarab Consulting.

After operating inside the building for the past decade, the firm is looking to leave, and Atco Brokerage Services believes the space could be marketed to a printing company or law firm.

"It would be a good war room for a law firm," said Peter Goldich, a managing director at Atco Brokerage Services. "It can be a medical facility, a diagnostic center, and the building's amenable to doing an expansion of the space," he added.

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BY DANIEL GEIGER

Weight Watchers is signing a 125,000-square-foot lease at 675 Avenue of the Americas for its Manhattan headquarters.

The company will relocate from 11 Madison Avenue, where it was subleasing space from the insurance company AON.

As of press time, the terms of the company’s deal, including the rental rate it was agreeing to pay nor the length of the lease, were yet clear.

Weight Watchers will join a growing list of tenants that have signed onto large deals in Midtown South, the city’s busiest office neighborhood by leasing activity and an area where rents have substantially appreciated over the past year amid the busy pace of deals.

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