New Developments
Developer Bo Jin Zhu filed permit applications for a nine-story hotel and a 16-story apartment building at 412 West 126th Street and 402 West 126th Street. The two buildings together will contain a total of 129,000 square feet of space.
UBS is looking for 700,000 and 900,000 square feet in Midtown for its New York headquarters. The company is being forced to move by its current landlord.
The Columbus Avenue retail corridor on the Upper West Side has gone from zero vacancies in a 15-block stretch along Columbus Avenue to 14. The spike in retail vacancies is due to high rent expectations of landlord and prices tenants are willing to pay.
The New York State Supreme Court has temporarily blocked the sale of 25 Bialystoker Place, a Jewish nonprofit's Lower East Side building for $13 million to developer Peter Fine, with congregants claiming the sale is illegal. A Supreme Court judge said he will stop the sale until he can determine who is on the board and whether it was properly conducted. Fine is also in contract to buy the air-rights to the building and another adjacent property.
GEMS Education, the world's largest operator of K-12 schools, is in talks to net-lease 174,000-square-foot office portion at 111 East 59th Street. GEMS would occupy the space as a private school, its first in New York. Princeton International, Dune Real Estate Partners and Empire Capital Holdings acquired the building for $170 million.
The American Bible Society's Columbus Circle headquarters at 1865 Broadway will soon be demolished to make way for new apartments. AvalonBay Communities bought the building for $300 million and plans to build a 300,000-square-foot residential tower.
BLDG Management is building a new residential tower at 222 East 44th Street which was formerly a garage. The 43-story, mid-block rental tower will rise 556 feet and include 429 units, 87 of those will be affordable.
Beacon Capital Partners secured a $321 million loan for its acquisition of a 50% stake in an office condo at 575 Fifth Avenue in Midtown. Deutsche Bank provided the mortgage, which consists of a $271.1 million acquisition loan, a $37.3 million building loan and a $12.6 million project loan.
Related leads Manhattan's top residential developers in building about 2 million square feet. Extell is the city's second most-active builder with projects like 217 West 57th Street and is planning 4.52 million square feet, including 12 buildings that will have 2,249 units. Chetrit is third behind with 2.96 million in development.
Running shoe manufacturer Asics closed its flagship store in Times Square after a dispute with the company that runs its North American retail operation. The 5,000-square-foot Midtown store, which opened less than a year ago at 51 West 42nd Street, was the last of 13 Asics stores in the U.S. to close as the company is embroiled in a legal battle with Windsor Financial Group.
Eli Lilly & Co. plans to expand its footprint in New York City, by adding 30,000 square feet at the Alexandria Center for Life Science at 450 East 29th Street.
The Vanderbilt family refinanced 501 Madison Avenue for $80 million. The family built 501 Madison Avenue in the late-1920s, swapped an existing $60 million construction loan with AXA Equitable Life Insurance Co. for an $80 million loan with the firm.
Developer Morris Moinian's Fortuna Realty Group officially filed plans for his Ismael Leyva-designed hotel at 1150 Sixth Avenue in Midtown with a few slight revisions to the project's size and scale. The 310-key hotel will reach 38 stories and span more than 138,000 square feet.
10 Hudson Yards, which topped out at 52-story height, is mostly rented with commitments for 85% of the tower's 1.7 million square feet. Tenants include Coach, which is taking 600,000 square feet of space; L'Oreal USA, which lays claim to 400,000 square feet; and VaynerMedia, which will occupy 90,000 square feet. Related and partner Oxford Properties Group are developing six towers totaling 13 million square feet at the 28-acre site. It is to be the largest privately funded real estate project in U.S. history.
The city's homelessness crisis continues to force the city to shelter people in converted private facilities. City Hall will take over the Verve Hotel at 40-03 29th Street in Long Island City and use it to house 200 homeless women. The facility will also provide mental health treatment and offer aid to residents in money management.
Victoria's Secret signed a 16-year lease for 63,780-SF at 640 Fifth Avenue, which will house the flagship store. The store, expected to open in November 2016, will feature three levels, including 9,350 square feet on the ground floor of the 18-story, 285,840-square-foot property. It will also retain an adjacent 3,230-square-foot store featuring 25 feet of Fifth Avenue frontage.
The Hudson Cos. redevelopment of the Brooklyn Heights branch of the Brooklyn Public Library just filed permit applications which includes a pair of nine-story affordable residential buildings in Clinton Hill. The developer is planning to bring affordable housing that will include a 78-unit, 54,000-square foot building at 907 Atlantic Avenue and a 39-unit, 28,000-square-foot structure at 1043 Fulton Street.
The EB-5 visa program is still alive. A key provision of the federal program expired. Congress put on hold tough new standards that could make it more difficult to qualify for overseas capital through the program. The program trades visas for investments that create jobs. Federal lawmakers will revisit the legislation in the next few months, but in the meantime keep the program intact.
The retail complex at Westfield Group's World Trade Center is completely leased. All 125 stores that will occupy the company's 350,000-square-foot space will open in the first half of 2016. Spaces at the complex range from 800 to 8,000 square feet, with an average size of 2,200 square feet. The company expects to do $700 million to $1 billion in annual retail sales that is between $2,000 to $3,000 per square foot.
