GRAYBAR BUILDING
Graybar Electric Company, Inc.
Graybar had entertained leasing space at their namesake on 420 Lexington Ave., at Grand Central for several years. They had left their headquarters building in 1982 for St. Louis. It’s not every day that you can lease a few thousand feet of space in New York City and have a million square foot building named after your firm. We commenced lease negotiations with one of the largest, most prominent Landlord’s in New York City, SL Green. We were in the process of finalizing a 2,773 sq. ft. office suite at the 1,100,000 square foot building when we hit a snag in the deal. I had mentioned to SL Green’s in-house Legal representative and broker that we needed naming rights on the iconic building. I informed them it was a deal-breaker. I sent this through an email and my phone could not have rung faster. It was both Legal and the Broker asking me in shock how this could be an issue in the 11th hour, when the deal was at lease execution. They asked me what could promulgate a 2,773 sq. ft. tenant to demand naming rights on a 1,100,000 sq. ft. iconic building in New York City. I asked them if this meant there was a problem and they were in disbelief at the question, ‘of course there is a problem’. Calmly, I explained that there wasn’t an issue, because the tenant already had the building named after them. There was a huge sigh of relief and Graybar remains a tenant at the building today.
Completed 12 Transactions over 15 years, involving 860,729rsf on behalf of Graybar Electric Company, Inc.
