New York City New Developments
Internet radio provider Pandora Media has slated a 52,450-square-foot lease at 125 Park Avenue.Warner Music Group is looking at a 225,000-square-foot space at 7 West 34th Street. Warner currently has space at 75 Rockefeller Center, and faces a deadline with its lease expiring next year. Still, the company is also looking over options to move elsewhere.
Planet Fitness gym has inked two Manhattan leases in a city expansion effort.
The largest contiguous block of class A office space in Midtown will soon come available at 1221 Sixth Avenue. About 537,000 square feet of space will open up in the final quarter of this year. The space will be vacated by French financial firm Société Générale, which is going to 245 Park Avenue.
Cooper Union, the Downtown University, announced it would start charging student’s tuition for the first time, received two tax breaks for real estate it has leased to Minskoff Equities and the Related Companies raising eyebrows at the Independent Budget Office. The parcels are located at 51 Astor Place and 22-36 Astor Place, respectively.
Sony is looking for new office space with an eye on 666 Fifth Avenue, between 52nd and 53rd streets. The Chetrit Group acquired the Sony Building with a three-year leaseback for $1.1 billion earlier this year. Sony is looking to find a 550,000-square-foot space.
Foot Locker is renting retail space at 440 Broadway. The store signed a 9,000-square-foot net lease for two above-ground levels and a lower level.
Andrew Penson, the owner of the famed Grand Central Terminal, is pitching a fight against City Hall, claiming the Midtown East re-zoning proposal undervalues air- rights in the district. Penson, who previously hoped on making a tidy profit by selling the transit hub’s 1 million-plus square feet of development rights, argued the targeted $250 per square foot price is too low for the city to raise enough money for infrastructure projects and neighborhood improvements.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority is in talks with finalists vying to develop a 31,000-square-foot commercial space at the Corbin Building, near the Fulton Street Transit Center in Lower Manhattan. The space is being offered up under a master lease alongside 30,000 commercial square feet in the neighboring transit hub; it could be used for retail, office or a hotel.
Deutsche Asset & Wealth Management, an arm of Deutsche Bank, is close to gaining an ownership stake in 90 Fifth Avenue, the former home of Forbes. The deal, in which Deutsche is seeking a preferred equity stake, would value the 11-story, 140-square-foot property at $115 million. Multiple parties remained in talks to potentially buy a stake in the property.
Hermes has slated a deal for a storefront space at the newly re-branded Brookfield Place in Lower Manhattan, formerly known as the World Financial Center. The store appears to be one of the largest inside the complex at 6,354 square feet.
A team is marketing a 7,583-square-foot development site in Chelsea that is aimed at hotel developers. The plot, a parking lot, located at 140-144 West 28th Street, includes 144,876 square feet of development rights.
There’s a new hotel being planned for the Midtown East area. The properties currently located at 145-147 East 47th Street will soon be razed to accommodate the 22-story, 93-room building. Other features at the hotel include a restaurant and bar at ground level, a top-floor penthouse and a rooftop terrace space.
The majority of residential properties that receive 421-a tax abatements are located in the city’s wealthier areas. A disproportionate share of buildings that receive the exemption seem to be centered in Manhattan, especially on the Upper East Side, and in riverfront Brooklyn districts, like Williamsburg.
Sales at Macklowe Properties’ 150 East 72nd Street condominium conversion have surpassed the 50 percent mark. This comes five months after the first units at the property hit the market,
Extell Development is looking to control the entire largely vacant 14-building Ring portfolio after it gained 50 percent interest in the package. It is already suing to force a sale of at least seven of the properties. Extell Development’s has acquired a partnership stake in a 14-building portfolio owned by brothers Michael and Frank Ring. The interest belonged to investor Joseph Tabak.
Extell Development’s Gary Barnett is looking to a Chinese bank for around $1 billion loan to finance his planned combination condominium and hotel skyscraper at 225 West 57th Street. Barnett is in talks with the Export-Import Bank of China for the financing. If the deal goes through, it could likely be the largest loan for a U.S. real estate construction project since the downturn and would be the Chinese bank’s first real estate project.
A mayoral panel voted for a rent increase of at least four percent for nearly a million city tenants in rent-regulated apartments. The Rent Guidelines Board approved an increase of 4 percent for one-year leases and 7.75 percent for two-year leases. The changes will take effect on or after October 1.
Hudson River Park and crumbling Pier 40 may have found their salvage. A state bill slated to be passed would permit the park’s trust to sell air-rights as far as one block east of park boundaries to help it pay for over $100 million repairs to the pier structure.
A city construction industry coalition is pushing insurers of United Airlines and American Airlines whose plane crashed into the world trade centers on 9/11, to pay the maximum of $2.8 billion. Silverstein Properties, which holds the lease at the World Trade Center site, has vowed to use the insurance payment toward the development of the not-yet-started 2 World Trade Center.
Brooklyn Law School is putting six buildings on the market, expected to get more than $41 million. The buildings are currently mostly vacant. They were previously dormitories for students at the law school. The portfolio includes 89 Hicks Street, 18 Sidney Place, 144 Willow Street, 100 Pierrepont Street, and 27 and 38 Monroe Place.
A $150 million project to redevelop a former naval base in Staten Island will commence. Ironstate Development will build the mixed-use project, which will consist of 900 market-rate apartments, 30,000 square feet of ground-floor retail space and 600 parking spaces.
Vornado Realty Trust is facing an $18 million lawsuit from Derek Johnson, an investor in its failed Harlem Park office development, who claims the company sabotaged the project and neglected to pay him his due from the sale of the site.
The daughter of the late developer Horace Bullard pulled from being sold a chunk of his real estate portfolio and among the most prized in the neighborhood is now off the market. Some people believe that the decision indicates she will not sell the properties at discount rates. Jasmine Bullard inherited such properties as the Shore Theater and the Thunderbolt and Playland Arcade site when her father died.
Urban Outfitters has signed a deal for three floors at 1333 Broadway to take 56,730 feet for 15 years, at a starting blended asking rent of $6.5 million per year.
A 12-story glass office building is to rise in the Meatpacking District. The 172,000-square-foot tower will be built at 61 Ninth Avenue.
Sotheby’s, the renowned auction house, has put its Upper East Side headquarters up for sale, the 500,000-square-foot glass and granite building at 1334 York Avenue. The 10-story building’s giant floorplates make it an attractive option for hospitals, residential developers, and office and hotel operators.
Rubin Schron, president of Cammeby’s International has offered $2 billion in cash to buy the Empire State Building,
David Bistricer’s Clipper Equity and the family-owned Rieder Holdings have sold 752 West End Avenue the nearly 200-unit Upper West Side rental building for $120 million. The buyer appears to be Crescent Heights.
The City Council is poised to green light the BAM South development. The mixed-use project, developed by Two Trees Management, will feature a 50,000-square-foot cultural center, a 20,000-square-foot public plaza and 300 units of housing.
