E-Trader Set to Take Almost 150,000 SF from Schwab

According to a published report, Instinet is about to sign a lease for nearly 150,000 sf on four floors of Mack-Cali Realty's Harborside Place 10 on this city's waterfront. According to the report, Instinet, which once occupied three floors at the World Trade Center, will utilize the space as a back-up trading floor and for administrative functions. The space will effectively serve as a disaster recovery center.

The company will continue to occupy some 300,000 sf at parent Reuters' tower in the Times Square area of Manhattan, where it had moved much of its operations after the World Trade Center disaster. The move of a portion of its operations to the New Jersey waterfront would involve a total of as many as 200 permanent employees.

The other key element of the story is that Instinet is taking the space on a sublet basis from Charles Schwab & Co. By way of history, Schwab pre-leased 300,000 sf from Mack-Cali back in October, 2000, and shortly thereafter took the rest of the 575,000-sf Plaza 10 building. By the time the building broke ground in March, 2001, however, Schwab was already cutting jobs and already talking about subleasing up to half of the space it had taken for a 15-year term.

Mack-Cali, the Cranford, NJ-based REIT, began building its sprawling Harborside Financial Center back in the late '90s. The complex, which houses such top financial firms as Dow Jones and Deutsche Bank, currently totals 3.7 million sf of existing and under-construction space.

Terms of the pending transaction have not been confirmed, although one report indicated that Instinet would be paying several dollars per sf less for its sublease than Schwab is paying Mack-Cali for the space.

Instinet could not be reached for comment, and Schwab did not respond to inquiries. Mack-Cali officials would not comment other than to say that "the deal is between Schwab and Instinet."