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Just three years ago, the owner of 411 Lafayette St. emptied all but a third of the space in the handsome six-story brick-and-masonry building, spent $6 million fixing it up, and waited.
Steve Meringoff, a principal at real estate investment firm Himmel + Meringoff, which has owned the building for nearly 30 years, recalled the experience as "painful."
Happily, it also paid off. Today, 411 Lafayette is fully occupied, with tenants that include two media companies, a photography studio and administrative offices for New York University. Meanwhile, the ground-floor space in the 103,000-square-foot building was recently used to stage a photo show chronicling the lives of New York City sanitation workers.
"There's a new breed of tenants here that are driving the market," said Mr. Meringoff, who noted that per-square-foot office rents in the area have jumped by about $20 in the past five years, to $50.
In fact, the narrow, eight-block-long triangular slice of lower Manhattan running north along Lafayette Street from East Houston Street up to Astor Place, and from Lafayette one block east to Bowery, is becoming Manhattan's newest hot spot. It boasts an...