Newsday from New York, New York • 134

i 1 I High-Rent streets rather than on the main avenue, reflecting the shortage of development space to the Plaza district What they lack in space, the newer buildings try to make up for in service and special touches, often heaping on mahogany, marble and granite along with concierges who provide everything Cram theater tickets to babysitters, extra-tall ceilings, doors and windows, elaborate security systems and super-high-tech electrical, air conditioning, rnimnnniMtinB and elevator sys- Continued from 1-age of location, views, image, amenities, utmnWn mJ ifadgn. Ai a result, for top floors they command rente of $60 to more than $70 a square foot, compared with average Midtown rates of $36 to $40, and as much as $20 more than top spaces in cities like Boston. Avery, very wealthy, successful, strong-minded financial-service egomaniac thats who rents spaces, said John Halpem, it of the Harts Mountain Industries unit that developed a pricey new 25-story gray granite building at the corner of 61st Street and Madison Avenue, whose top rents are $65 to $67 a square foot They like the views and they are One of the first small-floored, mid-block boutique buildings to succeed and become a modal for others was Tower 56, a 83-story building at 126 E. 56th St. east of Park Avenue, which was opened in 1983 tor HRO International.

The firm, led by Howard Ronson, a cousin of Herat Tower co-developer Gerald Ronson, has a reputation for strong management and services. Tower 66, with luxurious interiors and a reputation for superb service, has succeeded despite its almost drab, blocky, rose-granite exterior, 'small alatewaHed lobby and the tiny site that limits each floor to 5,000 square feet or lorn Gladstones 82-story comer building on 57th Street, whose facade curves toward to gain the building extra window space and com ply with zoning laws, includes a ritzy an-marketplace underground Place des Antiquaires and a circular granite sculpture on stilts at The 30-year-old Seagram Building on Park Avenue, above, dingo AboveJ the: pyramkll-t at 55th Street The tenarton the two top floors, consumer-finance State Street a new office is seeking foreign tenants an! rents tcvjEUTMx thejtighest i gets some of the highest office rente in the city because of its heralded architectural design. Below, the gray granite office building at Madison Avenue and 61st Street, developed by Mountejrv small floors and high rents. Some of the older top-rent buildings have familiar and established names like General Motors and while the newer ones in-Tower 56 and Park Avenue Tower (which is not quite on presti-gioua Park Avenue) and often have relatively small flows that attract a variety of boutique Some buildings are subtle, others ambpyanL Some win architectural praise, others are panned. But they all boast of prestige and pampering.

It certainly makes visitors feel they are doing business with a well-established organization, said James M. Jacobson, executive idee president of the Trump Group (no relation to developer Donald's family), a private takeover firm that is moving to the top floor of the 50-General Motors building on i Avenue. It creates a general aura of accomplishment that is helpfiil in all business. Reel estate sources said the investment group led by Eddie mid Julius Trump, whose $1.5 billion in holdings range fWwn the Mtimmw. based Fairlanes bowling alley chain to a Seattle-based chain or borne improvement centers is raying more than $70 per square foot, or about $1 million a year, for a mere 14,000 square feet.

That compares with top rental rates of $44 per square foot at the World Trade Center, which like GM has breathtaking views but is in the much cheaper downtown market. Like the Trumps previous offices on the 49th floor of the sloped-fa-cade. Mack-windowed building at 9 W. 57th St, the new space has stunning views of Central Park which can be seen through the telescope Eddie Trump keeps in his office. Central Park views help attract some of the highest rents to the dty for both the GM building and 9 West 57th even though their architectural designs are considered mediocre at best, real estate experts said.

The third building to this category of older high-priced buildings, however, has one of the most This foreign and financial tenants, todudfogaFtonch utility company and the investment hanking firm Three (Sties Research. To me, fts got the European look to it, said Michele DAmato, office manager and assistant to the U.S. headquarters to the 25th floor of the building from Cooper Square in Greenwich Village. But youre to someone who came from view of Central Park from a 50th-floor office atop the GM building Is one of citys most expensive. Park Avenue Tower, a looking l-yeaiold building in of the Mode between 65th and 56th streets, west of Park Ave-has not only a Helmut Jahn-three-story-high marble lobby with vaulted ceilings, pink-brown-and-gray exterior and lighted pyramid on top, but also International Business Machines.

IBM is a tenant and a joint venture partner in the building with developer George Kirins Park Tower Realty. The tenant on the top two floors of the 36-story building including the 14-foot-tall penthouse is Commercial Credit a consumer finance company with more than $4 billion to assets. The Baltimore-based company is headed by Sanford Weill, the driven co-founder of the brokerage firm that is now Shearsan Lehman Hutton Inc. He is also the former president of American Express Co. who handrpicked the ailing Commercial Credit as his turnaround mission after he left American Express.

Sandy Weill was shown the space and be just fell to love with it, said Mary McDermott, a company spokeswoman. Weill, 55, had fireplaces put to mi the 106th floor of the World Trade Center and the library of the new space. But the top spaces arent always easy to fill, apwr-inlly if the layouts are unusual and the location a bit out of the way. A glittering new wedge-shaped building Continued on Page 11 ternational accounting firm, is taking two of the floors. All of the top-rent buildings are in a loosefy defined area called the Plaza district, which stretches a few blocks to the south and to the east of the Plaza Hotel, an area foil of Fortune 500 companies and organizations seeking to woo them or wow them.

The land cost to build to the Plaza district is astronomical," said Kevin W. Ward, executive vice president of Weatherall Green Smith, the leasing agent for Heron Tower, a mid-block boutique-type office building at 70 E. 55th St Unlike the older buildings, many of the newer buildings with top prices have relatively mn floors. Some of them are on side securities firm Donaldson, TaifUn A Jenrette and now a private investor. The choice of office space can be critical in-establishing the image of a company and the mood of the staff! The space that the Trump Group is moving into is one of four floors in the GM building that is being vacated by Revlon Group which is moving most of its headquarters across the street to a squat building at 625 Madison Are.

Sources said the' staff has been grumbling for weeks, especially since takeover artist and Revlon chairman Ronald O. Perelman, who won. control of the company to late 1985, gets to keep his space on the 49th floor of the GMr building: Peat Marwick Mato the in mused designs to the dty the Building on Park Avenue, a three-c Mies van der Rohe work being considered for landmark status. Tenants an the top floors of the Seagram building range from Investment Development and First Security Co. to OdQell Westfiu-Larsen, an international hipping company, and Cassa di Risparmio, an TtuHun bank.

Deutsche Bank, wliii-h Tmf iwyful pftlif top floors at 9 West 57th, is moving to the former E.F. Hutton headquarters on West 52nd Street, and no new tenant has been named. Other tenants at 9 West include company-buyout king Kbhlberg; Kravis Roberts and William H. Donaldson, co-founder of the 4 I-.