Commercial rents in Manhattan are a tale of two cities, according to a study published yesterday by a brokerage company.

Rents in Midtown rose for the first time last year since they went into a tailspin in 2001 due to the implosion of the dot-com economy and the September 11, 2001, attacks, according to the study, which was conducted by Studley, a Manhattan-based real estate broker that represents tenants nationwide.

Midtown rents fell from an average record high of $74.54 per square foot in 2001 to a low of $63.10 in 2003, but bounced back to $66.27 last year, a 5% increase. A senior vice president at Studley, Joyce Geiger, said it indicated a shift in the marketplace.

“What you have here is the revival of Midtown,” Ms. Geiger said. “The pendulum is swinging back. It’s not the tenant’s field day any longer.”

Landlords who once had to absorb real estate taxes and utility costs to attract tenants are finding they don’t have to offer as many concessions, which is perhaps the greatest barometer of demand for office space.

This is especially true for high-end spaces, which are rarer and usually have a higher occupancy rate, said a vice president at the Durst Organization, Tom Bow. Durst is building and will co-own the 52-story, $1 billion Bank of America Tower at One Bryant Park.

In looking for a New York headquarters, the bank chose a high-profile, 2-acre site where the bank could build “an iconic building, recognizable in the skyline,” Mr. Bow said.

Landlords leasing downtown offices, however, continue to live in the shadow of the attack on the World Trade Center, which destroyed more than 13 million square feet of prime Class A space.

Financial-services companies like Citigroup are continuing to shift some of their operations across the Hudson River for security reasons.

Rents in Lower Manhattan rose from $39.17 a square foot in 2003 to $40.60. However, an increase in concessions offered to lure tenants actually resulted in a decrease in landlords’ returns by 12%.

The value of landlords’ concessions downtown – which range from paying for utilities to covering the cost of renovations – rose from an average of $63 per square foot in 2000 to $79 in 2004.

This has prompted some large companies with Midtown origins to opt for the relative bargains in Lower Manhattan. The law firm McKee Nelson LLP moved in December from 5 Times Square into 67,000 square feet of office space at 1 Battery Park Plaza.

“Midtown has its identity, has its direction, has its client base,” Ms. Geiger said. “Downtown you have it struggling to find it new identity.”

Part of that identity shift has been a gradual increase in demand for residential space, she said.

A senior vice president at the Real Estate Board of New York, an industry group, said it made sense that downtown would lag behind Midtown in its revitalization, but he questioned whether landlords would accurately reveal their concession packages.

“The critical piece is the concession packages and that is not info that is readily available,” Michael Slattery said.