At a media briefing Tuesday morning, C&W's Joseph Harbertsaid a key factor was job losses in the office-using employmentsector. During the 2002 downturn, Manhattan's losses were greaterthan the national average. This time around, the city is doing noworse than the US as a whole.

Q1 office leasing activity across Manhattan shot up 84%year-over-year, according to C&W's quarterly report. However,the three-month total of 5.7 million square feet was strong notonly by comparison to the dismal market of a year ago. It's also up14% over Q4 2009, which was viewed as a strong quarter in and ofitself, C&W says.

Harbert, COO for the New York metro region, noted that as the"white- collar recession" hit Midtown especially hard, so thesubmarket has been particularly resilient. Its Q1 total of nearlyfour million square feet in office leasing activity is above thesix-year rolling average.