Major Developments:
LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, the parent company of Louis Vuitton, Christian Dior and jewelry designer Tiffany & Co., is in negotiations to acquire 745 Fifth Avenue, a 35-story tower.LVMH is competing against other bidders for the property.
SL Green acquired 2 Herald Square leasehold for next to nothing; it had completed a deal to acquire a 95% stake in the leasehold at 2 Herald Square: SL Green paid $7 million to settle the property’s $182.5 million mortgage.
The City Comptroller is suing Lloyd Goldman’s development company over allegations that it failed to pay the wages required by the 421a tax break at 222 East 44th Street.
Legion Investment Group purchased 1128 Madison Avenue for $22 million. The parcel is the final piece of a $95 million assemblage on the southwest corner of Madison and East 84th Street, where it plans an 18-story luxury condo building with 22 apartments and ground-floor retail.
515 7th Avenue Realty is planning to construct a 36-story, mixed-use building near the corner of West 38th Street and Seventh Avenue. The 355,500-square-foot proposal calls for 23 stories of office space and 255 hotel rooms, which would replace a four-story commercial building on the site. The developers need new zoning, a text amendment, and a special permit for the hotel, and must navigate Uniform Land Use Review Procedure.
Major changes are on the way for two real estate trade groups.
The Rent Stabilization Association and the Community Housing Improvement Program have been in merger talks for a while, and RSA’s board could vote on the deal this week. The landlord groups have overlapping membership and priorities, and their marriage may result in a more unified message from owners of New York City rental housing.
For entirely different reasons, a new group is aiming to replace the embattled National Association of Realtors. Compass agent Jason Haber and Mauricio Umansky, star broker and co-founder of The Agency, are forming the American Real Estate Association.
The new organization has launched a National Listings Service and is departing from NAR in a few key ways. AREA will not have a president, and will allow its member brokers to determine their own commission rates. The group will not require listing agents and buyers’ agents to cooperate, which is, of course, the subject of various litigation against NAR.
The mayor and governor agree: The state legislature must make way for a new 421a.
Mayor Eric Adams, in his third State of the City address, spotlighted Albany as he sought to drum up support for his goal to add 500,000 homes by 2033.
“We also need our state legislators to step up and deliver a plan that would change how we build from the ground up,” Adams said. “That means incentives for affordable housing development, including a new version for the 421a program.”
The New York City Industrial Development Agency selected two properties to take part in the Manhattan Commercial Revitalization program, known as M-CORE, The program offers a strategic tax abatement designed to encourage renovations at office buildings that otherwise would struggle to attract tenants. The buildings need to be between 250,000 SF and 10 million SF built before 2000 and located south of 59th Street. 175 Water Street is a 31-story office tower and will be the first to receive a M-CORE tax break of around $41.3 million over 20 years, with the developer putting up $150 million itself toward the building’s transformation.
850 Third Avenue is a 21-story property and got the 2nd tax break from the M-CORE program for $58.4 million in cost over a 20-year period, with HPS committing $62.8 million in funding.
The New York City Department of Finance determined that the average office building rose by 2.5% for fiscal year 2025, The market value of trophy office buildings citywide went up by 5.6% from FY 2024 to FY 2025. Class-A office space increased by 3.75%.
In New York City there are 5,215 apartments under conversion from offices to residential , 25 Water St. and the iconic Flatiron Building are being converted. A 113,000 SF office tower near Penn Station is being considered for a residential conversion.
Roughly 50,000 properties are now required to comply with Local Law 97 in New York City’s emissions reductions law, for buildings larger than 25K SF.
Landlords are legally required to submit to the city emissions data or demonstration of their good faith efforts, with the first fines for noncompliance. The goal is that by 2025, these buildings will have seen a 40% reduction in their greenhouse gas emissions from 2006. Only about 9 % are not already compliant.
Mayor Adams has a plan to add 12,000 housing units in the city, pushing development at city-owned sites in an attempt to make progress on his administration’s “moonshot” housing goals.
Adams vowed to fight for measures designed to tackle NYC’s housing supply issues via his City of Yes initiative, including the latest part of his administration’s housing plan. Dubbed 24 in '24, the proposal plans to push forward with preservation and development on 24 public sites this year.
The Mayor wants to shutter the thousands of illegal cannabis shops across the city.
Adams is reopening the NYC Housing Authority’s Section 8 voucher waitlist, which has been closed for 15 years, and issuing 1,000 vouchers per month.
Adams asked for help from legislators in Albany and NYC to pass measures designed to facilitate housing production. “That means incentives for affordable housing development, including a new version of the 421-a program and legislation to help convert up to 136M SF of unused office space into affordable housing.
Adams plans to break ground on the Battery Coastal Resilience initiative this year. The $200 million project is expected to raise the wharf promenade in the neighborhood and is part of a larger plan to bolster Lower Manhattan’s ability to face extreme weather events and sea level rise.
The city plans to begin investing $450 million it has received in federal resiliency grants this year, using the sum to fund flood insurance assistance for homeowners and renters, restore public housing developments, subsidize resilience measures in one-to-four-unit properties and multifamily buildings, and protect the city’s infrastructure from flooding.
Dahill Funeral Home is seeking city approval for a 13-story multifamily project with 155 apartments and 23,000 square feet of commercial space and a 36,000-square-foot medical office at 2525 65th Street. The city would need to rezone the property from manufacturing to residential.
JEMB Realty negotiated an extension on the Herald Center’s CMBS loan that was set to mature this month. JEMB put up a “significant equity infusion” in exchange for a 1-year extension of their $255 million mortgage and an option for another two 12-month extensions, until 2027.
Alf Naman is converting and enlarging an existing parking garage at 738 Greenwich Street for the planned 52,000-square-foot structure aka 125 Perry Street. Naman hopes to sell 7 apartments and 1 commercial space for $245 million.
SL Green and Georgio Armani have partnered on a three-floor, 20,000-square-foot retail and 10-unit condo project with a sellout price of more than $200 million at 760 Madison Avenue . Armani’s firm will pay $13.5 million per year to lease its retail space.
Sackman Enterprises developed a condo project, a 22-story building with 74,000 square feet at 15 West 96th Street. 21 apartments will have a sellout of $152 million.
A condo project at 200 East 20th Street Tidhar Group and Glacial Global Partners will seek $140 million for its inventory of 52 apartments. The 78,000-square-foot project.
Rybak Development finished the Arloparc, an 80,000-square-foot limestone and masonry condominium, at 126 East 86th Street with 28 units for $139 million.
Aurora Capital Associates and Gottlieb Real Estate Associates want to sell the apartments and two commercial units for $108 million. Aurora converted the Keller Hotel, built as sailors’ lodgings in 1898, and constructed an adjacent seven-story building for the project.
Forkosh Development is completing a condo conversion in Lenox Hill asking $96 million for 35 apartments. The 11-story former warehouse at 305 East 61st Street dates back. Forkosh took over in 2022 Dubbed the Archive Lofts, three units asking a total of $5.6 million are in contract. After a 12 percent discount, a two-bed, two-bath unit is asking $1,500 per square foot. One-bedrooms are priced $1,280 to $1,670 per square foot.
Aurora Capital and Gottlieb Real Estate had planned to sell the 19 apartments at 111 Charles Street for a combined $81 million, but are instead renting out the apartments.
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints signed a three-year lease for 40,000 square feet at West End Collegiate Church’s facility at 245 West 77th St, where it will share space with the owner. A third, unidentified religious organization, which will use it on Fridays and Saturdays.
Miki Naftali has filed plans for a 21-story building at 1 Division Avenue in Williamsburg. The plans call for a 269-foot-tall, 298,000 RSF of commercial space and 218 residences . The development will also include 109 parking spaces. The existing 88,000-square-foot warehouse will need to be demolished to make way for the project.
Flex-warehouse firm ReadySpaces signed a lease for 116,000-square-foot lease at 184-10 to 184-60 Jamaica Avenue on a 3.5-acre lot owned by KABR. The asking rent was $25 per square foot.
Flagstar Bank leases more than 54,000 square feet of office space, and the 4,500 is ground-floor retail at 320 Park Deal. The asking rent ranges between $100 and $125 per square foot.
There were 9,909 housing units proposed in the city last year analyzing applications submitted to the Department of Buildings, well under the annual average 2000 to 2020 each produced an average of roughly 20,000 units.
An author of the so-called “urban doom loop” study is now spouting optimism about New York City, if not the office sector he savaged.
BuIan Schrager and Steve Witkoff have a plan to avoid foreclosure at the Public on the Lower East Side. But one of the investors is suing to block the deal. Schrager and Witkoff are working with their lender Varde Partners to convert some of the 367-room hotel’s $90 million distressed debt into equity.
The EB-5 center filed a lawsuit last week claiming that Schrager and Witkoff need its approval to negotiate any deal.
The anonymous owner of 60 East 93rd Street filed plans to convert the 18,000-square-foot property back into a single-family home and is zoned for residential use.
