Manhattan’s commercial real estate fundamentals perked up in the first quarter, GlobeSt.com reported.

Though a complete economic recovery is in the distance, that market’s renewed strength arrived sooner than expected, as evidenced by its turnaround from just one year ago.

According to a first-quarter report by Cushman & Wakefield Inc., office leasing activity in Manhattan skyrocketed 84 percent year-over-year. Activity was also up 14 percent compared with the fourth quarter of 2009, which in and of itself was a strong showing, Cushman & Wakefield said.

“It’s clear that we’re off to a recovery, at least in Midtown,” said Joseph Harbert, the real estate brokerage and consulting firm’s chief operating officer for the New York region.

The figures are skewed higher, though, due to 11 Times Square, a 40-story 1.1 million-square-foot office property that is under construction and now counted in the tallies.

But Harbert said “there are deals cooking” to lease up that building.

According to Harbert, Manhattan’s job losses were greater than the national average during the 2002 downturn. But this time around, the city is doing no worse than the United States as a whole, which is a key factor in the signs of stabilization.

Manhattan’s retail sector also edged up in the first quarter.

Of the seven retail submarkets tracked by Cushman & Wakefield, only one experienced a vacancy rate increase and five of the seven saw average asking rates increase.