Durst signs 20-yr lease with General Services - Durst Organization; General Services Administration

Real Estate Weekly, Oct 21, 1992

The Durst Organization, a Manhattan-based real estate development company, has signed a 20-year lease with the United States General Services Administration.

The GSA will lease a portion of 1133 Avenue of the Americas that will become an independent building-within-a-building with the address, 110 West 44th Street. This building will open onto 44th Street between Broadway and the Avenue of the Americas in New York City.

The GSA will lease nine floors to accommodate 1,200 employees from the accounting division that audits Fortune 500 companies. A complex building-wide computer system will be installed to facilitate the GSA's auditing needs.

All employees and visitors of the GSA will be accommodated through the lobby of West 44th Street, and five elevators will be used exclusively by the GSA. Employees of GSA and visitors will ride an escalator to a sky lobby on the second floor, where they will have access to a reception desk and to the GSA elevators.

Special construction of this building-within-a-building will ensure that there is no interaction between the tenants of 1133 Avenue of the Americas and employees and guests of the GSA. This is necessary because of the security needs of this division of the GSA.

To accomplish this, a comprehensive restructuring and renovation of this portion of 1133 is necessary. The architect for the project will be Emery Roth & Sons; mechanical engineers will be Cosentini Associates; structural engineer will be the office of Irwin G. Cantor, and the building will be Tishman Construction Corp. of New York.

The brokers for this lease included Carol Nelson, Mary Anne Tighe, Maria Morris and Ed Goldman from Edward S. Gordon brokers.

Durst said a comprehensive renovation of 1133 was now underway. He said that 60 percent of the current tenants in the building have leases that expire in 1994, and that talks are now underway with tenants to rent this space.