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At one point, it seemed that Rockefeller Center didn't want the National Broadcasting Co. to stay in the RCA Building.
Now, Rockefeller Center is back in the bidding war for NBC. The Rockefeller Group Inc. is worried by a softening office rental market, sobered by the prospect of leasing NBC's 1 million square feet.
Rockefeller Center may not be able to retain NBC in the face of intense competition from Donald Trump's Television City and a Hartz Mountain project in the Meadowlands. But its tight-lipped officials clearly have decided that keeping NBC is the path of least resistance for one of America's most prestigious properties. Keeping NBC might also bolster the lackluster stock of Rockefeller Center Properties Inc., the real estate investment trust that will eventually control the center.
"I think Rockefeller Center wants NBC," says Charles J. Urstadt, chairman of Pearce, Urstadt, Mayer & Greer Inc.
"Sure they could rent the space to others for more money, but to suddenly turn that one million square feet of space out to the market would be quite difficult to handle."
The glamor and excitement of broadcasting pervades Rockefeller Center, arguably the city's best planned-office development. At 10 a.m., the concourses underneath 30 Rockefeller Plaza are filled with tourists waiting to see live programming. And the look of the buildings, thanks to the art deco statutes and decades-old retail shops, is definitely pre-World War II.
The Radio Days quality of the original 12-acre, 6.2 million-square-foot part of Rockefeller Center that faces Fifth Avenue might vanish with NBC,...