Hudson Yards

• November 2024 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Office: Developers are looking to build 71,000 apartments with the extension to the lapsed 421a property tax break. Nearly 650 buildings have sent letters of intent to qualify for the extension, which would give them until June 15, 2031, to complete them. 33,000 planned apartments would not be built unless the state legislature extended the 421a construction deadline beyond June 2026. Bloomberg signed a lease for 925,000 square feet at 919 Third Avenue, bringing its total long-term office commitment in Manhattan to nearly 2 million SF. Amazon is negotiating for 350,000 SF at 452 Fifth Avenue for occupancy in 2025. …
  
  
• August 2024 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Office Leases: Manhattan office leasing still has a long way to go. Leasing volume during the first half of 2024 was up 16% year-over-year. Even if leasing volume continues at the same pace for the second half of the year, it would still be about one-third below 2019. This past quarter, the Plaza District led leasing, accounting for more than 30% of Manhattan’s leasing volume. The flex office industry leased almost half a million square feet in Manhattan during the highest quarterly volume in the industry since 2019. Certain Midtown corridors are faring better than others. On Park Avenue, for …
  
  
• August 2024 New York New Developments
• Major Developments: Red Apple Real Estate obtained a $57 million construction financing for a 12-story mixed-use project in Chelsea at 280 Eighth Avenue. The 100,000 square-foot building will include 104 residential units, a community space and ground-floor retail. Blackstone signed a deal to expand its headquarters at Rudin's 345 Park Avenue for over 1 million SF. Ares Management expanded its headquarters at 245 Park by more than 130,000 SF to 307,000 SF and JPMorgan Chase reached a deal, in a joint venture with Hines, to acquire 250 Park for more than $300 million. JPMorgan construction crews are building the bank's …
  
  
• July 2024 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Office: The number of new leases Downtown was 35% below the five-year average. Blackstone is finalizing a deal to expand its headquarters at 345 Park Avenue, upping its lease from 750,000 SF to just over 1 million SF. Blackstone extended its lease by six years to the end of 2034, approximately 55% of the 1.9M SF office building. Two-year old Hudson Yards skyscraper is now 81% leased. Tishman Speyer signed five new lease agreements totaling 129,500 square feet at its Hudson Yards tower. Bloomberg extended its lease for another 11 years at 731 Lexington Avenue in the Plaza District for …
  
  
• May 2024 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Office: The chief executive of Manhattan’s second-largest landlord bemoaned free rent and tenant allowances as a “killer.” Vornado needs to commit as much as $300 per square foot on concessions to secure companies as tenants for more than $40 per square foot over 10-year deals. The weighted average rent of Vornado’s Manhattan office buildings is $100 per square foot. Demand for the best office buildings in New York has not only recovered but it’s causing a spillover effect. Large tenants that have lease terminations over the next several years are racing to snap up space while it’s hot in trophy …
  
  
• March 2024 New York New Developments
• Major Developments: Central Queens Academy rents 48,000 square feet at 85-65 Queens Boulevard for its second elementary school. Related Companies proposed a casino development at the Western Rail Yards of Hudson Yards. The project, estimated to cost $12 billion, includes three skyscrapers, each around 1,200 feet tall. The gaming and resort building would span 2.7 million square feet and include a 1,750-room hotel, conference facilities, retail outlets, and restaurants. The project is contingent on receiving one of the state’s three downstate casino licenses and obtaining a zoning change of the Hudson Yards. Starwood Property Trust reported higher loss reserves of …
  
  
• February 2024 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Retail: Del Frisco’s Double Eagle Steakhouse renewal for 25,000 SF restaurant at 1121 Sixth Avenue. Madewell signed a 10-year lease to consolidate its two Brooklyn stores along North 6th Street in Williamsburg for 8,300 sf. Barnea Bistro signed a 15-year lease at 114 West 47th Street in Times Square for 7,602 sf. Max Deals, the home goods retailer, signed a 20-year lease at the base of a new residential construction located at 1049 Ogden Avenue in Highbridge for 5,800 sf. TFogo de Chão, the Brazilian steakhouse, signed a new lease in the Oculus mall at 3 World Trade Center in …
  
  
• January 2024 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings for Sale: Pakistan International Airlines Corporation is nearing an agreement to bring its Roosevelt Hotel to market in the first step towards a redevelopment. The hotel on the 43,000-square-foot site by Grand Central Terminal through the state-run. Rene Benko’s Signa forced to sell stake in Chrysler Building. An Austrian court is forcing a sale of Signa Holding’s stake in the landmark Midtown Manhattan property. Benko’s company is believed to hold a 50-percent stake in the 77-story office tower. Lender seeks to foreclose on Isaac Hager’s Trader Joe’s property. G4 alleges his firm owes $140 million on the Williamsburg building. …
  
  
• November 2023 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Office: Office leasing in activity jumped 26% from the second quarter to the third. But much of that was upheld by two large leases and availability remained at record highs. Finding office tenants has been a slog for Manhattan landlords. Midtown and Midtown South have improved as “flight to quality” companies upgrading to better Class A space. Midtown South’s availability hit a new all-time high with an 18.6% jump. One of New York City’s prominent real estate law firms is going out of business, Stroock & Stroock & Lavan. Their demise is a blow to New York’s real estate industry. …
  
  
• October 2023 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings for Sale: US Masters Residential Property Fund is looking to sell its 479-property portfolio piecemeal of largely one- to four-unit properties for $858 million. Blackstone stopped making payments in March 2022 on the $308 million CMBS loan backing 1740 Broadway, a 26-story office tower a block from Carnegie Hall, and gave the keys to the lender. CWCapital was appointed and is now planning to sell the note for the 621,000 SF tower. Extell Development is now asking $195 million for the triplex down from $250 million. The price of the 17,500-square-foot triplex or $11,100 per square foot. A $240 …
  
  
• August 2023 New York New Developments
• Major Developments: The value of commercial and multifamily construction declined by 31% year-over-year from January through June. 5 World Trade Center will be the first residential building at the World Trade Center. Gov. Kathy Hochul approved a deal to include 400 income-restricted apartments as part of a 1,200-unit tower. Margaritaville lenders go after El-Gamal and partners for $86 million debt after they triggered a bad boy guarantee by throwing the project into bankruptcy, and the investors are personally on the hook for $86 million in debt. El-Gamal and his partners, Flintlock Construction Services’ Andrew and Stephen Weiss, became personally liable …
  
  
• June 2023 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Office: A record 94 million square feet of office space was available last month. Tenants leased just 1.5 million square feet in the period, far below the monthly average from the three previous years. The 17.4% availability rate also matched a record from February 2022, and marked a nearly 75% increase in available office space since March 2020. Only two leases signed last month exceeded 100,000 square feet and just one additional lease surpassed 50,000 square feet. All three were renewals or extensions (or both). Midtown Manhattan counted 891,000 square feet leased in the period to reach an availability rate …
  
  
• June 2023 New York New Developments
• Major Developments: The U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously that Hennepin County wrongfully pocketed the excess proceeds from the sale of Geraldine Tyler’s condo unit. Tyler owed the county $15,000, a sum that ballooned from $2,311 in unpaid property taxes. To settle the debt, the county sold her condo unit for $40,000 and kept all of it. The court agreed that this violated the Fifth Amendment’s takings clause, reversing the Eighth Circuit’s decision in the county’s favor. NYC’s lien sale, debt from overdue taxes, water bills and the like is sold to an investment trust that can foreclose on the property …
  
  
• May 2023 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Manhattan Retail Market: Burberry rented a short term lease at 693 Fifth Avenue. This means the cash flow from the property is short of revenue to cover its $250 million loan. Burberry took 14,000 square feet of retail space, 15% of the property at 693 Fifth, paying just $372 annually per square foot, a third of the $1,144 that Valentino agreed to pay when it inked a 15-year lease in 2013. David’s Bridal layoffs target 14 New York stores including three locations in New York City: including 45 West 25th Street in Manhattan, Plaza 48 at 3460 48th Street in …
  
  
• March 2023 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Office: Net absorption was down over the same period, ending the year at negative 2.8 million square feet, nearly 23% below the year-earlier figure. The Manhattan office space improved marginally over the year to just below 17%, while average asking rent rose slightly to $75.41 per square foot. Midtown’s Plaza District was 621,000 square feet. Times Square area had a negative absorption of 484,000 square feet. Penn Plaza/Garment District submarket with net absorption of negative 1.3 million square feet. The Financial District has more than 25 %. U.N. Plaza was the tightest office submarket with an availability rate of 5.2%, …
  
  
• February 2023 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Office: The amount of available office space has increased almost 70% since the onset of the pandemic to 91.4 million square feet. After 2.8 million square feet of negative net absorption in the fourth quarter, net absorption since the start of the pandemic now stands at negative 37.6 million square feet. Asking rents for Class A space in Manhattan averaged $81.51 per square foot in the fourth quarter, up slightly from a year ago. Net effective rents are down after factoring in concessions. Tenants in the TAMI are increasingly upgrading to newer spaces. While 37% of companies in those fields …
  
  
• February 2023 New York New Developments
• Major Developments: Mayor Adams proposes Manhattan rezoning of Midtown to allow conversions of offices to residential construction in areas that only permit manufacturing and office use. West 23rd to West 41st streets is zoned for manufacturing, which prevents ground-up residential development and conversions of vacant office space for residential use. Office conversions could lead to 20,000 new apartments but would require changes to the Multiple Dwelling Law, including lifting the cap on the city’s residential floor area ratio. Citadel is eyeing a 51-story, Norman Foster-deleased tower at 350 Park Avenue, where it will redevelop properties leased from Vornado Realty Trust …
  
  
• January 2023 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Office: AECOM renewed its lease at 100 Park Avenue, but renewed for only 45,000 square feet from 108,000 square feet. Asking rent for the space was $65 per square foot. Crowell & Moring leases 71,000 sf at Brookfield's Two Manhattan West. GameChanger signed a 25,000-square-foot lease at 124 East 14th Street aka Zero Irving. The company will occupy the 17th and 18th floors. Asking rents started at $120 per square foot. Pandora takes 27,000 sf at 1540 Broadway. The asking rent on the 15-year lease at the former Bertelsmann Building was $82.00 per square foot. CompStak signed a five-year lease …
  
  
• December 2022 New York New Developments
• Major Developments: Silverstein Properties, BedRock Real Estate Partners and Kaufman Astoria Studios have come to terms with the City Council for approval of a controversial megadevelopment in Queens. The $2 billion Innovation QNS will bring about 3,200 apartments to Astoria, 45% of them affordable. The agreement calls for 1,436 affordable units including 500 for households earning 30% of the area median income and 157 for homeless people. Related Companies and Sterling Equities will develop a 25,000-seat soccer stadium for the New York City Football Club at Citi Field and is expected to arrive by 2027 for the NYCFC squad. The …
  
  
• November 2022 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Office: Tenants leased 9.2 million square feet in the quarter, up 26% from the previous quarter and 28% from the same period last year. Financial services, insurance and real estate tenants were the top-leasing industries during the quarter, accounting for 47% of square footage leased. Year-to-date leasing volume stands at 24.2 million square feet, an approximately 50% climb from last year. Leasing volume this year is on track to outpace last year’s total by 29%. Manhattan’s availability rate dropped to 16.4%, its lowest level since March 2021. The market’s 4.7% decline in availability from 17.2% in the second quarter was …
  
  
• November 2022 New York New Developments
• Major Developments: Related Companies is planning a 1.3 million-square-foot office project at 514 West 36th Street. The property, also known as 517 West 35th Street, was at one time part of a 1.4 million-square-foot, mixed-use project. SL Green and Caesars Entertainment have teamed up to bring a proposed Caesars Palace to 1515 Broadway, even though they have encountered opposition. The DoubleTree’s rooms are among thousands that remain vacant as hotels that never reopened. 46 New York properties with more than 10,400 rooms still remain closed. Industrial real estate demand is cooling after leasing 150 million square feet of warehouse space …
  
  
• October 2022 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Office: September office occupancy numbers may represent a new normal. As more companies are settling into a wide range of work policies, from full-time, never or somewhere in between. The pandemic-induced drop in office use is projected to have a devastating effect on the market. The city’s office buildings will fall in value by 28%, or $49 billion. The stretch along Third Avenue from 42nd Street to 59th Street is becoming a stark example of the downside to the city’s ongoing flight to quality. The city’s office vacancy rate is at 19%, it is 29% on the 17-block corridor, nearly …
  
  
• October 2022 New York New Developments
• Major Developments: The Gateway tunnel project is to take three years longer and cost $2B more than originally budgeted. The completion of the tunnel is now expected in 2035 . The existing two-way tunnel, which will close for repairs when the new one opens, won’t be fixed until 2038. The tunnel, which is part of a larger Gateway project, is now estimated to cost $16.1 billion. The 4.5-mile rail project will carry travelers under the New Jersey Palisades, the Hudson River and Hudson Yards. New York City upped its demands on landlords to disclose retail vacancies in their buildings in …
  
  
• September 2022 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings for Sale: Related Companies is looking to sell the Equinox Hotel, at 33 Hudson Yards. The 212-key property, which includes office and retail space, opened in 2019. The property includes office and retail space and opened in 2019. Pacific Oak Capital and Savanna have defaulted on their loan for 110 William Street in the Financial District. Cornell Realty Management owns a 15% stake in Churchill Real Estate’s Penn Plaza building at 257-263 West 34th Street filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Buildings Sold: SL Green, along with foreign investors, paid $445 million for the 337,000-square-foot Plaza District office tower at …
  
  
• August 2022 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Office: Business leaders have started to accept that remote work is here to stay. IBM CEO Arvind Krishna recently said that only 60% of workers for the company would ever return to the office. JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon, once a staunch advocate of in-person work, also altered company policies this year, while recognizing remote work’s staying power. Meta, Amazon pulling back on New York Office plans and are cutting back on expanding their office footprints in New York. Meta decided not to take an additional 300,000 square feet of space at 770 Broadway. Meta is also pausing a plan …
  
  
• June 2022 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Office: Tiffany & Co. trims HQ office lease to a 10-year extension for its office at 200 Fifth Avenue from 400,000 square feet to 287,000 square feet, lopping off almost a third of its footprint. Blackstone is considering either expanding at 345 Park Avenue or moving and renting 1.5 million square feet. HSBC grabs 265,000 sf at Tishman Speyer’s Spiral. HSBC is expected to move into Hudson Yards skyscraper by January 2024. Macquarie Group signed a 220,000 SF lease to be the first tenant at 660 Fifth Avenue. Wellington Management is planning 71,000 RSF at 799 Broadway. Empire BlueCross BlueShield …
  
  
• May 2022 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Office: Chase rents 8.7 million square feet in the city. Chase is trying to sublease 700,000 square feet at 4 New York Plaza in the Financial District and 100,000 square feet at its Hudson Yards office, 5 Manhattan West. The national office vacancy rate is already 12.2%, the highest of the pandemic. It’s up from 9.6% at the end of 2019. About 243 million square feet of office leases are set to expire across the country in 2022. Lease expirations are projected to exceed 200 million square feet in each of the following three years as well. Tenants are negotiating …
  
  
• April 2022 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Office: Developers have started office projects totaling 2.1 million square feet since the beginning of 2021, well below the 3.2 million square feet of office construction starts in 2019 and the 5.7 million square feet of office construction starts in 2020. There are 19 million square feet of office construction underway in Manhattan. Deliveries are expected to surpass supply in both 2022 and 2023, increasing the supply of office stock by 4%, after that, however, office deliveries will likely begin to fall off in 2024, a decline that may continue through 2027. Many office tenants appear to be ready to …
  
  
• April 2022 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings for Sale: Sapir is selling 260 and 261 Madison Avenue for about $600 million. The two office properties span close to 1 million square feet and are approximately 80% leased. Simon Development and BPG, are selling the 43-story, 466-unit Alta+ complex at 29-22 Northern Boulevard in Queens. The building is 97% occupied. Blackstone Firm hands over keys to 1740 Broadway. Office property’s $308M loan transferred to special servicing. Bank Leumi is seeking to foreclose on a $120 million loan on Seaport Residences (aka One Seaport), a planned 60-story condo tower that has long been plagued by the building’s tilt: …
  
  
• February 2022 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Retail: Manhattan’s retail market is slowly making a comeback. Last quarter aggregate leasing velocity rose to about 1.86 million square feet. The figure is up 17% from the prior quarter, but still 14% below the prior year.The number of direct ground-floor availability in the fourth quarter decreased to 266 spaces from the 282 recorded in the third quarter, across the 16 retail corridors. On Broadway in SoHo, availability dropped 24% from 25 to 19 spaces. The average retail asking rent in those 16 retail corridors dropped about 1% to $597 per square foot or 8% below the prior year. This …
  
  
• November 2021 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings for Sale: A CMBS trustee filed to foreclose on the loan on the defaulted loan secured by the 470 Broadway property citing $22.9 million in debt. The debt consists of $18 million in unpaid principal, $2.6 million in unpaid interest and $2.3 million in protective advances. Thor was delinquent on a $105 million loan at 597 Fifth Avenue, after missing payments in August and September 2020. PBC is seeking a buyer for its 865,000-square-foot building at 452 Fifth Avenue where HSBC’s New York office is located. The building is expected to go for at least $850 million, or $982 …
  
  
• July 2021 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Office: In the depth of the pandemic last year, a majority of New York City office tenants facing lease expirations did not want to commit to a long-term deal. Instead, they opted for shorter extensions. The number of short-term renewals, a deal shorter than five years, was up 46% in 2020 compared to the year before. Almost 20% of Manhattan office space is up for rent, up to about 80 million square feet of space either unrented or for sublet. About a third of commercial leases are to expire in the next three years. Only a fifth of workers are …
  
  
• July 2021 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings for Sale: 14 Vesey Street, a rare historically vacant building, is for sale for an undisclosed amount in Downtown, Manhattan. A lot is available at 347 Lexington Avenue for sale to establish a hotel. The asking price is $10,000,000. It is 20 stories tall with 65 rooms. Two properties at 1984-90 3rd Avenue are for sale for $15,000,000. There are four retail units. Buildings Sold: Premier Equities acquired a 17,500-square-foot hotel building at 130 Duane Street for $18 million. The seller was Hersha Hospitality Management. Steven Schnall and Howard Lev sold an 8,300-square-foot, mixed-use building at 287 Bleecker Street …
  
  
• June 2021 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Office: Companies that listed their offices for sublease are now pulling them off the market. At least 589,000 square feet of space that was offered for sublease has been delisted. Subleases now account for 30% of total vacant office space. 3.5 million square feet of office space was offered for sublease in the first quarter of the year, compared to 4 million square feet in the fourth quarter of 2020, and 4.6 million square feet in the third quarter of that year. Average asking rent was $72.97 a foot, down 0.4% from March and 8.3% from a year ago. Net …
  
  
• June 2021 New York New Developments
• New Developments The Gateway tunnel is back on track. Federal officials completed their environmental review of the $11.6 billion rail tunnel, giving the project the green light. The move comes after years of delays from the Trump administration. The plan calls for building a new rail tunnel beneath the Hudson River, which would connect New Jersey’s Bergen Palisades to New York’s Penn Station. The approval could potentially advance real estate acquisitions and other pre-construction activities. State lawmakers are seeking to give New York City more control over Cuomo’s Penn Station expansion and new development in the surrounding area. A recently …
  
  
• April 2021 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Office: As Covid vaccinations bring a return-to-office closer to fruition, more companies are expecting to reduce their real estate footprints. 21% of company executives expect to reduce their office space in the next 12 months, up by 3% points from the third quarter. Total office leasing was also 43% lower than the 2020 monthly average volume of 1.58 million square feet.in 2020. Nearly half of companies expect that employees will be back in offices by September. As of early March, just 10% of Manhattan office employees have returned to the workplace. Some believe the trend of working-from-home or work-from-anywhere is …
  
  
• February 2021 New York New Developments
• New York New Developments Real estate leaders in New York have admitted that there’s a long road ahead before things return to normal or a new normal. WeWork recently exited four locations in Midtown, Soho and the Meatpacking District. Knotel declared bankruptcy. Gov. Andrew Cuomo is pushing a plan to get employees back in office buildings and office landlords are on board. Cuomo announced that rapid testing would be used in state-designated orange zones to open office buildings, along with restaurants and theaters. He said that major commercial operators with space totaling more than 100 million square feet have already …
  
  
• December 2020 New York New Developments
• New York New Developments The planned redevelopment of the Grand Hyatt Hotel could consist of a supertall tower rising more than 1,600 feet. The development at 109 East 42nd Street is tentatively called the Project Commodore. The proposed building would have 2.1 million square feet of office space, a 500-room hotel, around 10,000 square feet of open-air public space with 43,370 square feet of retail. Vornado Realty Trust has suspended its efforts to sell two office towers that it co-owns with the Trump Organization. They had been looking for a buyer for its 70% stake in the buildings, located at …
  
  
• November 2020 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings For Sale: Four New York Plaza, a 22-story, 1.1-million-square-foot office building in the Financial District, is for sale. The current owners, Edge Fund Advisors and HSBC Alternative Investments, purchased the property in 2012 for $270 million and could sell it for $300 million. Brookfield Asset Management is looking to sell its life-sciences real estate portfolio for around $3 billion. The investment company is marketing the 2.3 million-square-foot portfolio. A 12-story building in New York’s Diamond District has hit the market for $113 million. The building at 576 Fifth Avenue contains both retail space on the lower levels and office …
  
  
• October 2020 New York New Developments
• New York New Developments Vacant office and retail space will have a domino effect on the city’s budget and economy. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority faces a $12 billion budget deficit by 2021. The low office numbers have also led to a projected $9 billion drop in sales tax and other revenues. About 24,000 New Yorkers have lost their lives to the coronavirus. The unemployment rate is 16% and just 10% of workers have returned to the office by September. Personal income tax revenue may drop by $2 billion this fiscal year. Only a third of hotel rooms are occupied, and …
  
  
• September 2020 New York New Developments
• New York New Developments The Metropolitan Transportation Authority plans to cut service by 40% if Washington does not send $12 billion in federal aid, crippling the city’s chances to come back from the pandemic. The timeline for the overhaul of John F. Kennedy International Airport will likely be pushed back years because of plummeting passenger demand. Passenger volume is down 85%, and officials warn that passenger numbers might not match last year’s level of nearly 62 million passengers until 2023. July was the slowest month of the year for large construction applications. The total size of the 10 biggest projects …
  
  
• August 2020 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Manhattan Office: Manhattan office leasing in the second quarter of 2020 totalled just 3.18 million square feet. That is 50% of the prior quarter and down 72% year-over-year. This is the slowest quarter for Manhattan office leasing since 2009. Office workers have been working from home during Covid. How many will remain at home after Covid has yet to be determined. Midtown saw 1.88 million square feet in leasing activity in the quarter, down 52% year-over-year. Midtown South leasing activity declined 87% year-over-year to just 640,000 square feet. Leasing activity downtown fell 73% year-over-year to 660,000 square feet. Manhattan’s Office …
  
  
• June 2020 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Office Office leasing was virtually dead, except for TikTok who just rented 232,000 at 4 Times Square. A few landlords have lowered prices. Many are taking a wait and see attitude until Tenants return to work and the dust has settled. Retail The brick and mortar apocalypse keeps getting worse, as more national chains declare bankruptcy or announce store closings. Mom and pop retail is faring far worse with many lacking reserves to stay in business. Restaurants will hurt even more, once they partially open and have to pay full rent. Sales Building sales were very very slow with only …
  
  
• April 2020 New York New Developments
• New York New Developments Gov. Andrew Cuomo barred all employees of non-essential businesses from reporting to work, and laid out what amounts to shelter-in-place rules for New Yorkers, though he avoided the phrase. The order exempts food businesses and others deemed essential. After saying he will halt all residential and commercial evictions for 90 days, Cuomo noted that landlords would have a hard time renting out vacant apartments anyway, and real estate agents can’t show apartments under the new workforce rules. About $20 billion in retail property loans are coming due, and it’s unclear how much of that debt will …
  
  
• March 2020 New York New Developments
• Major Developments: Cosi has filed for Chapter 11 for the second time in four years. The company has locations across the U.S. Modell’s Sporting Goods is renegotiating leases in more than 150 locations across 10 states. They sent letters to 19 landlords pleading with them to “dig deeper” so the retailer can avoid filing for bankruptcy. The latest proposal to expand Penn Station includes buying a full city block to the south for an entirely new terminal with eight tracks. The governor now has sights on West 30th and West 31st streets between Seventh and Eighth avenues for the “Empire …
  
  
• February 2020 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Total Manhattan office leasing activity was up 2.9% from last year, reaching 42.97 million square feet and up 28.4% above the ten-year average. Average asking rents dipped slightly to $78.75 at the end of the year, following a few large above-market deals. Midtown South had 16.41 million square feet in leasing activity, a 14.5% increase from 2019. With an overall average asking rent of $76.70. Midtown office leasing hit a new all-year high with 2,750,000 square feet in leases signed, up 58% year-over-year. Availability rate of 11.3%, with base rent average fell by nearly $2 to $87.003. Facebook’s 1.5 million-square-foot …
  
  
• January 2020 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• The office leasing scene maintained momentum with just under 2.2 million square feet of deals in the ten largest leases. Facebook’s 1.5 million-square-foot lease at Hudson Yards accounted for more than half of that total. Facebook signed a lease at 30, 50 & 55 Hudson Yards for 1,500,000 square feet. The landlord is Related Companies. Dentsu Aegis Network signed a 15-year lease at 341 Ninth Avenue for 320,000 square feet. The landlord is Tishman Speyer. Morgan Stanley signed a new deal to expand its existing lease at 1 New York Plaza for 90,000 square feet. The landlord is Brookfield. New …
  
  
• January 2020 New York New Developments
• Major Developments: New York City’s hotel inventory includes 113 new developments to open in the next few years, with just over half located outside Manhattan. New York’s hotel inventory will reach 144,000 rooms by the end of 2021 up 65% from the 87,000 rooms the city had in 2010. Chang has filed plans for his biggest hotel yet. The 34-story, 974-room development at 150 West 48th Street. Michael Bloomberg is moving his presidential campaign headquarters from the Upper East Side to Times Square. The new headquarters are located at 229 West 43rd Street, 8th floor. New York City will end …
  
  
• January 2020 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings For Sale: Viacom is considering a sale of CBS’ 38-story Midtown headquarters. CBS occupies about a third of the 870,000-square-foot building at 51 West 52nd Street. Orda Management Corp. is looking to sell 225 and 233 Park Avenue South containing about 675,000-square-foot for as much as $800 million. Target signed a lease for a 33,000-square-foot store on 42nd Street between Seventh and Eighth Avenues. The store will be Target’s 10th small-format shop in Manhattan, and is slated to open in 2022. Buildings Sold: McDonald’s sold a three-story retail building containing 5,800-square-foot at 429 Seventh Avenue for $35 million. The …
  
  
• November 2019 New York New Developments
• Major Developments: Barneys has been sold to Authentic Brands Group and B. Riley for around $270 million. The new owners will likely shut Barneys’ locations, including its 275,000-square-foot flagship property at 660 Madison Avenue. IBM is looking for 500,000 square feet to consolidate its New York office space from multiple locations including a WeWork. IBM’s lease at WeWork’s 88 University runs through 2024. Vornado Realty Trust has encountered more retail challenges as Forever 21 filed for bankruptcy protection. However, Forever 21 may be able to keep its stores at 435 Seventh Avenue and 1540 Broadway open for a bit longer. …
  
  
• September 2019 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Market Overview: Midtown office leasing continued to slow, totaling just under 1 million square feet, down 21% from the month before and 26% year-over-year. The availability rate stayed flat at 10.6% while average asking rent rose to $88.20. Leasing activity in Midtown South slowed with 610,000 square feet in leases signed, a 20% decline from last month. The availability rate ticked down to 10%, and the average asking rent fell to $83.12 per square foot. Lower Manhattan office leasing jumped to 890,000 square feet, nearly double the month prior, making the first half of 2019 the submarket’s strongest half-year since …
  
  
• September 2019 New York New Developments
• Major Developments: Signs of an escalating trade war between the U.S. and China caused real estate stocks to dip but then largely performed well compared to the overall market. Nuveen is joining Taconic Investment Partners on its $230 million purchase of a portion of ABC campus on the Upper West Side. The new owners plan to convert one of the properties, an office building at 125 West End Avenue, into space for life science tenants. No plans are clear for the other two properties: studio space at 320 West 66th Street and a property known as Lot 61. WeWork has …
  
  
• August 2019 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Manhattan leasing activity which includes both renewals and new leases totaled 20.26 million square feet. The first half of 2019 saw 15% less activity than the second half of 2018, but this was still 12.2% above the five year average. Asking rents continued to rise to record highs, with an average of $77.82 across Manhattan and $84.51 in Midtown in large part to a boom in Downtown. Office leasing in Midtown South was flat year-over-year with 7.02 million square feet in total volume. TAMI tenants were on top here with 54% of total activity from WarnerMedia’s 1.3 million-square-foot sale-leaseback deal …
  
  
• August 2019 New York New Developments
• Major Developments: Several New York landlords have resisted leasing large chunks of their buildings to co-working tenants. One prominent owner is Empire State Realty Trust who will not lease to WeWork. The Durst Organization rejected WeWork’s offer to lease 12 floors at the World Trade Center in hopes that there were better offers. Oscar Health is doubling it spaced in Hudson Square and signed a sublease for the fourth floor at One Hudson Square, bringing its total presence to 160,000 square feet. The asking rent was around $80 per square foot. Barneys luxury fashion is reportedly weighing a second bankruptcy, …
  
  
• July 2019 New York New Developments
• Major Developments: The top office leases made up more square footage than last month. The top 10 totaled 1.7 million square feet, up from 1.5 million square feet the previous month. EmblemHealth renewed its 15-year lease for 440,000 square feet of space at 55 Water Street. The landlord is the Retirement Systems of Alabama. New York City Human Resources Administration renewed its 10-year lease for 342,496 square feet of space at 250 Livingston Street. The Department of Environmental Protection will also occupy the entire eighth floor as part of the lease. The landlord is Clipper Equity. Colgate-Palmolive Company renewed its …
  
  
• July 2019 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings Sold: The land under the Dream Downtown hotel in Chelsea sold for $175 million. The buyer of the hotel and retail condominium units at 355 West 16th Street was Worth Capital Holdings 52 LLC, with Charles R. Holzer as managing member. VRV Corporation sold two adjacent, five-story mixed-use buildings at 213 and 215 First Avenue for $19.65 million. The corporation had owned the buildings, which have 28 apartments combined, for decades. The buyers were two limited liability companies that listed Abraham Sanieoff as manager. First Republic Bank loaned $11.3 million for the purchase. Entities tied to Sanieoff recently picked …
  
  
• May 2019 New York New Developments
• Major Developments: Financial services accounted for 39% of the leasing activity, of which 13% was leased by co-working companies. Coworking had accounted for 12% of leasing volume last year and 5% in 2017. TAMI followed with 16% of leasing volume in the first quarter. There were six Midtown deals over 100,000 square feet. Sumitomo’s 266,000 square foot renewal and expansion at 277 Park Avenue and the Bank of Montreal’s 215,000 square foot relocation to 151 West 42nd Street. Job growth in New York City increased by 1.8% with 68,700 jobs added by the private sector from 2018 to 2019. The …
  
  
• April 2019 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Manhattan Office: Midtown office leasing totaled 1.60 million square feet in January. The availability rate was 10.8% up slightly and average asking rent rose more than $4 to $82.45 per square foot. Midtown South leasing totaled 550,000 square feet in January, 53% more than the same period last year. Availability rate rose to 10%, up slightly from December, with average asking rent to $82.25. Lower Manhattan office leasing totaled 910,000 square feet in January. Availability rate is 13.3%, and the average asking rent is $61.80 per square foot. Half of the leasing volume came from one deal, New York City …
  
  
• April 2019 New York New Developments
• Major Developments: Gyms and athletic wear retailers once again dominated the retail leasing scene last month in New York City, securing four of the top 10 biggest deals. The rest mostly comprised of restaurants. The biggest retail lease deals signed last month totaled 188,100 square feet, down 41,600 square feet from January’s total of 229,700 square feet. In February of 2018, the top 10 retail leases totaled 108,200 square feet. Hermès of Paris inked a lease for 40,000 square feet of space at 706 Madison Avenue for a new flagship location. The building’s landlord is Friedland Properties. Brooklyn Boulders signed …
  
  
• February 2019 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Office rental prices in Class B, C and F buildings are rising, as the existing stock is being demolished to convert to residential, hotels or new office buildings. You can expect rents in those buildings to rise 20-30% over the next 2-3 years. Manhattan’s office-leasing sector recorded 32.4 million square feet worth of deals last year, its best showing since 2000. Though demand was tempered by 12,420,581 RSF of new construction and another 13,761,699 proposed. There is an additional 1,314,000 RSF under renovation. Average office rents remained flat as year-over-year, coming in at $73.33 per square foot. Midtown South average …
  
  
• February 2019 New York New Developments
• The top 10 office lease deals totaled 2.65 million square feet, up more than 885,000 RSF more than the previous months top 10 leases. Deutsche Bank is set to take over 1.1 million square feet of office space at 10 Columbus Circle and will leave 60 Wall Street. Millennium Management signed a lease for 300,000 square feet of space at 399 Park Avenue, relocating from 666 Fifth Avenue. Asking rents are between $73 and $90 per square foot. WeWork signed a lease for 236,000 square feet of space across seven floors at 1440 Broadway, where it will have its own …
  
  
• February 2019 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings For Sale: GFP Real Estate and Northwind Group are looking for a new equity partner to buy 60- 80% of the equity in the property known as 7 Hanover Square which was the former Guardian Life headquarters in the Financial District. Anbang Insurance Group is looking to offload a $5.5 billion hotel portfolio including properties in New York, Chicago, and San Francisco. SL Green Realty and its partners are soon going to put the 500,000-square-foot office building at 521 Fifth Avenue on the market. SL Green Realty is considering selling the Art Deco “News Building” at 220 East 42nd …
  
  
• November 2018 New York New Developments
• New York Major Developments: L&L; Holding Company and Normandy Real Estate Partners are trying to upgrade the Terminal Stores warehouse in West Chelsea into a $1.8 billion property in four years. They plan to spend an additional $220 million to renovate the property which will need approvals from the city Landmarks Preservation Commission, call for the creation of 100,000 square feet of glass penthouse space on top of the building. The project’s setup is estimating rents of $135 per square foot for the penthouse office space. New York City hotel developers are about to lose nearly half of the land …
  
  
• October 2018 New York New Developments
• New York Major Developments: The number of extended-stay luxury hotel rooms are on the rise, increasing to 34% over the past five years. Occupancy rates are coming back higher than typical rooms at an encouraging 77%. Amazon 4-Star opened in Soho at 72 Spring Street and is similar to Amazon Books, but will sell a range of products, all of which must have a rating of at least 4 stars by Amazon customers. Women-only meeting space provider Luminary is opening its first location in NoMad. The company signed a 15,000-square-foot lease at 1204 Broadway. The 12-year deal spans the third …
  
  
• September 2018 New York New Developments
• New York Major Developments: Manhattan dominated the list of New York City’s top 10 largest real estate projects in July. Marx Development Group’s roughly 213,000-square-foot hotel and retail project at 450 11th Avenue in Hudson Yards. Covenant House is planning a 12-story, 60-unit building in Hudson Yards about 53,000 square feet. Its new project would replace a smaller eight-story youth homeless shelter currently on the site of 460 West 41st Street. 323 East 61st Street from the William Macklowe Company will span about 50,000 square feet and stand six stories and 74 feet tall. WeWork just signed a 258,344-square-foot lease …
  
  
• August 2018 New York New Developments
• New York Major Developments: New York City’s hotel market had a better-than-expected first quarter in 2018, with revenue per available room growing 7.4%. Warehouse space is at its tightest level since the first dot-com boom, and it’s driving business. The second quarter saw availability fall to 7.2%, the lowest level since 2000, as demand continues to outpace supply. Hotel and condominium developer Lightstone Group plans to build a fourth Moxy Hotel in Manhattan at the site of a lighting store in the Bowery. Lightstone is in contract to acquire the building at 151 Bowery from Emmut Properties. Chinese insurers, conglomerates …
  
  
• July 2018 New York New Developments
• New York Major Developments: The top 10 office lease deals totaled 2.4 million square feet, larger than last month’s top 10 leases, which totaled 1.9 million square feet. 1) Deutsche Bank signed a lease for 1,100,000 square feet of office space at 1 Columbus Circle. 2) Facebook signed a lease for 370,000 square feet of office space at 770 Broadway. 3) McKinsey & Co. signed a lease for 186,000 square feet of office space at 3 World Trade Center. 4) Blank Rome signed a lease for 138,000 square feet at 1271 Sixth Avenue. The firm is taking the 15th, 16th …
  
  
• June 2018 New York Buildings For Sale
• New York Buildings for sale: An entity managed by hedge funder Mark Sonnino is selling 555 West 25th Streets office property for $52 million, four years after paying $27 million in an all-cash deal. The six-story loft building has just over 51,000 rentable square feet. The Church of Saint Monica, at 413 East 79th Street, plans to sell 102,170 square feet of development rights at 406 East 80th Street to 79 East Owner LLC, an entity tied to Extell Development for around $35.8 million. The deal comes with an option for Extell to purchase an additional 6,748 square feet of …
  
  
• April 2018 New York New Developments
• New York Major Developments: An Upper East Side retail site that has been vacant for more than two years will soon be Morton Williams. A curated version of the supermarket is coming to 1251 Third Avenue, the former site of a Talbot’s. The grocery store chain has taken 13,000 square feet across two floors, with an asking rent of $2 million per year. Chinese investment in the United States’ commercial real estate has plummeted by 55% last year, dropping from $16.2 billion in 2016 to $7.3 billion in 2017. Purplebricks, a London-based discount brokerage, received $177 million equity investment from …
  
  
• March 2018 New York Buildings For Sale
• New York Buildings for sale: HNA Group will put $4 billion in U.S. properties on the market, including 245 Park Avenue, the Manhattan office tower it paid $2.2 billion for just last year. The Roe Corporation is looking to sell the 131,000-square-foot development site with approved plans for a 45-story condominium-and-hotel tower overlooking City Hall Park at 267 Broadway. Ares Management is looking to sell its 50% stake in a Greenwich Village office building at 799 Broadway that its partner Normandy Real Estate Partners is planning to demolish and replace with a ground-up, Class-A office building. The sale of the …
  
  
• February 2018 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• New York Office: Manhattan’s office market saw average asking rents fall in 2017 for the first time in seven years, as landlords lowered prices and more expensive spaces left the market. Average asking rents declined slightly to $72.74 per square foot. Lower Manhattan asking rents increased year-over-year (up 6.8% to $63 per square foot). Hudson Yards/Manhattan West supplanted the Plaza District as Manhattan’s most expensive submarket, though its small size 7.74 million square feet compared to the Plaza District’s 55.3 million square feet, makes it much more sensitive to shifts in pricing. The submarkets of Soho, Murray Hill, Hudson Square, …
  
  
• January 2018 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Office rents on Fifth Avenue are the second-most expensive in the country. Average asking rents on the Midtown stretch between 50th and 61st streets clocked in at $116.04 per square foot, and at the top end of the range reached $185 per square foot. Manhattan’s office-leasing market stood tall. Tenants flocked to get deals done, particularly in new buildings on the Far West Side and in Lower Manhattan, pushing leasing volumes ahead of last year’s figures. In fact, half of the year’s Top 10 most valuable office leases were inked at Hudson Yards and Manhattan West. The 10 biggest new …
  
  
• January 2018 New York New Developments
• Co-working is coming for two of the country’s leading office building owners. Blackstone Group-owned Equity Office and Houston-based Hineshave both released RFPs looking for partners to help them gain experience in the co-working business currently dominated by WeWork. Equity Office is particularly interested in figuring out how to make tenants more interested in their Howard Hughes office complex in Los Angeles, and the company expects responses to their RFP in the next few days. WeWork has lately been seeing explosive growth and is currently valued at $20 billion. The firm has launched a gym and elementary school in recent months …
  
  
• December 2017 New York New Developments
• New York Major Developments: Retailers south of 96th Street that pay more than $250,000 per year in rent also pay a tax on that rent. A new bill would raise the threshold to $500,000, meaning about 2,000 business would escape the tax. London-based rhubarb, a major hospitality company in England, plans to open new restaurants at 30 Hudson Yards and at the Hudson Yards Shops & Restaurants. The restaurant at the mall will contain 5,800 square feet on the fifth floor. At 30 Hudson Yards, rhubarb plans to open a 10,000-square-foot restaurant on the 92nd floor. Soho Properties, in partnership …
  
  
• October 2017 New York New Developments
• Major Developments: The Port Authority of New York & New Jersey seems to be leaning toward building a new bus terminal on the Eighth Avenue site, rather than expand to another location. The plan now is to build two new floors on top of the terminal that is already in place. Those levels would be for the buses while the three lower levels are being rebuilt. Barry Diller officially declared Pier 55 dead after years of legal disputes and around $40 million in pre-construction costs A startup wants to pay landlords $10,000 per month or more to install intelligent, electronic …
  
  
• August 2017 New York New Developments
• New York Major Developments: Starwood Mortgage Capital provided a $105 million loan for Aurora Capital Associates and William Gottlieb Real Estate’s Restoration Hardware project in the Meatpacking District. The 10-year loan retires a $60 million loan from Wells Fargo. Aurora and Gottlieb are building a 60,000-square-foot retail project at 9-19 Ninth Avenue, where Restoration Hardware signed a 15-year lease worth $250 million. Northern Manhattan’s commercial real estate market was sluggish. A total of 138 properties sold in 154 deals for a total dollar volume of $694 million uptown, down 64% year-over-year. The average price per buildable square foot at development …
  
  
• July 2017 New York New Developments
• New York Major Developments: NYU Langone Medical Center is opening a 50,000-square-foot biotech co-working center at 180 Varick Street, a project that hopes to help compete with biotech hubs like Boston and San Francisco. NYU Langone invested $10 million over the last several years on upgrades at 180 Varick Street and is investing another $5 million. The state’s economic development arm Empire State Development is contributing another $2 million. New York City is the most expensive city in the world when renting flexible, short-term office space. The average monthly price to rent a workstation in flexible offices for one person …
  
  
• June 2017 New York New Developments
• Major Developments: Developer David Marx continues to put the pieces together for an upcoming Aloft hotel at 450 11th Avenue, refinancing the project with $67 million in loans. The de Blasio administration is finally moving forward with a proposal it announced 18 months ago to curtail the city’s emerging self-storage industry as part of City Hall’s plan to preserve middle-class jobs by regulating development in certain manufacturing zones. Several retail brands are on the lookout for large spaces in the borough, including discount clothier Primark. Former Mayor Michael Bloomberg donated $75 million towards the construction of the Shed, an arts …
  
  
• May 2017 New York New Developments
• New York Major Developments: The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey is rethinking plans to move its Midtown bus terminal a block west and is now considering renovating the existing station. The bi-state agency ordered a study of its current bus terminal to assess the cost of revamping its existing facility. Officials have estimated that moving the terminal would cost $10 billion. Earlier this year the Port Authority dedicated $3.5 billion to creating a new terminal. The borough’s hoteliers saw revenue per available room dip to its lowest point of the current cycle, as the hotel market struggles …
  
  
• March 2017 New York New Developments
• New York Major Developments: The city is taking another attempt at rezoning the Garment District, a move that will likely rollback rules that require landlords to lease a portion of their building to the fashion industry. The possible rezoning is connected to the Mayor’s plans to build a new manufacturing campus in Brooklyn. The Bloomberg administration tried to rezone the Garment District in 2009, but stopped the plan due to opposition. In the fourth quarter of 2016, absorption rate was negative in all three Manhattan office submarkets: Downtown, Midtown, and Midtown South for a total net absorption of negative 277,988 …
  
  
• February 2017 New York New Developments
• Major Developments: Jared Kushner sold his equity stake in 666 Fifth Avenue though the identity of the buyer and what they paid for remains unknown. Kushner paid $1.8 billion for 666 Fifth Avenue in 2007, he then sold off a major stake in the retail portion to Carlyle Group and Crown Acquisitions for $525 million. The Chinese Investment in foreign property increased by more than half last year. The U.S. received the bulk of those investments, totaling $14.3 billion. New York University signed a lease for 58,000 square feet at 180 Madison Avenue, and has committed to taking another 41,000 …
  
  
• January 2017 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings For Sale: Premier Equities.">Premier Equities is in the process selling three NoMad buildings and a Lower East Side retail condominium unit in separate deals for a total of about $26 million. Premier paid Victor Group $12 million for 275 Fifth Avenue and $4.6 million for 2 East 30th Street. The developer is in contract to buy 273 Fifth Avenue for around $3.5 million. The lot at 2 East 30th Street currently houses a five-story, 5,719-square-foot mixed-use building. The five-story apartment building at 275 Fifth spans 9,269 square feet. The adjacent four-story commercial building at 273 Fifth Avenue is 8,060 …
  
  
• December 2016 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Office leasing Manhattan leasing activity stood at 28.13 million square feet year-to-date at the end of October, up 5.4% through the first 10 months of 2015. Year-over-year leasing activity in Midtown held relatively steady, down 8.2% compared to last year. In Midtown South, leasing activity was 420,000 square feet, down more than 50% from the same month last year. Tenants signed deals to take more than 2 million square feet of office space in October, down more than a third from the same period last year. Midtown South leasing volume between the beginning of July and the end of October …
  
  
• December 2016 New York New Developments
• Major Developments: The city’s Human Resources Administration will renew its lease for 264,358 square feet at 109 East 16th Street and plans to spend more than $20 million on renovations. The proposed lease has a starting rent of $76.83 per square foot. As the market for land sales in Manhattan has cooled off amid a real estate slowdown, air rights trades have plummeted. The dollar volume spent on Manhattan air rights through the end of September totaled $70.69 million. That sum was down roughly 74% from the $269.78 million spent on deals that closed through the first nine months of …
  
  
• December 2016 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings For Sale: Brookfield Property Partners has put the 45-story office tower at 245 Park Avenue up for sale. Sources close with the 1.8 million-square-foot tower believe it is worth north of $2.1 billion, or more than $1,200 per square foot. Lightstone Group hopes to sell the retail space and garage at the base of the Marriott Moxy Hotel in the Garment District, which is under construction, for $64 million. The developer is looking to offload a 4,000-square-foot retail condo and 27,000-square-foot garage at the 16-story building at 485 Seventh Avenue. Buildings Sold: United American Land bought 65 Spring Street …
  
  
• November 2016 NYC Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Office A surge of new supply in Manhattan’s office market is starting to make a dent on rents. With millions of square feet in new office space being built at Hudson Yards and the World Trade Center complex, some market observers are warning of a supply glut. Manhattan office market has had a negative absorption rate, as leasing activity through the third quarter has not been able to keep pace with additional supply. Absorption year-to-date sits at negative 2.2 million square feet. The Downtown office market shows positive absorption of nearly 570,000 square feet, while both Midtown and Midtown South …
  
  
• November 2016 New York New Developments
• New York Major Developments: Construction spending in New York City is expected to soar to $127.5 billion by the end of 2018, showing that the building boom still has legs. Predictions that spending will reach $43.1 billion in 2016, a 26% increase from 2015’s construction spending in 2017 is projected to reach $42.1 billion and then $42.3 billion in 2018. Non-residential construction of $17 billion projected in 2016, a 27% increase from last year. Office construction accounts for 20 million square feet of new space will be added over the next five years, much of it in Hudson Yards. Tishman …
  
  
• October 2016 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• With millions of square feet of new office construction coming online and the Manhattan office leasing market 23% slower than over the same two-month period a year ago. Manhattan’s overall net absorption stood at negative 2.65 million square feet year-to-date, a 131% increase over the same period last year. The availability rate also rose slightly to 11.2% from 10.6%. Asking rent is also up from $70.08 per square foot to $73.72. Over the next five years, more than 20 million square feet of new office space in Manhattan is expected to be delivered. The office space is spread across 23 …
  
  
• October 2016 New York New Developments
• Major Developments:The Related Companies is planning a 63-unit mixed-use building at 501 West 18th Street in Chelsea. The 10-story building will contain 97,800 square feet of residential space, along with 10,300 square feet of commercial space that will be divided across two retail units on the ground floor. Related bought the pair of parking lots which are adjacent to the IAC building in 2014 from investors Barry Haskell and Matthew Resnicoff. The $205 million price or $700 per square foot set a record for the neighborhood. The developer secured $125 million in financing for the purchase. Tishman Speyer filed plans …
  
  
• September 2016 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Manhattan Office New commercial leasing plummeted during the second quarter of this year, one of several signs that the city should brace for an increasingly sluggish economy. Leasing activity dropped 15.6% from the same time last year, with only 7 million square feet rented. This is the second consecutive decrease in leasing activity, following the first quarter’s 6% year-over-year drop. This quarter, most leasing activity occurred in Midtown with 4.4 million square feet where median rent was $79.18 per square foot, followed by Midtown South with 1.5 million square feet where rent averaged $76.45 per square foot. Midtown Manhattan has …
  
  
• September 2016 New York New Developments
• Major Developments: SL Green Realty says it has shaken a pesky lawsuit that threatened to stall the construction of its office building near Grand Central Terminal, One Vanderbilt. The REIT has settled a lawsuit filed by the owner of Grand Central, which alleged that the office landlord and the city rendered his 1.2 million square feet of air rights useless when it rezoned the area. The settlement was made possible, in part, by the recent sale of a stake in Grand Central to Michael Dell’s MSD Capital. In 2012, the Witkoff Group announced it would build a new hotel at …
  
  
• August 2016 New York New Developments
• Major Developments Hershey Company plans to open a new flagship store at the base of 20 Times Square, a location that will triple its current 2,200-square-foot space at Times Square. The new location will be a block away from the company’s rival, Mars Inc.’s M&M; World. Gary Barnett’s plans to raze 10 buildings on the block including 10 West 47th Street. Extell secured permits to demolish 10 West 47th and 2 West 47th, 3-13 West 46th Street, 562 and 564 Fifth Avenue. Extell bought 10 West 47th, a 72,000-square-foot office building for $74.4 million. L+M Development Partners and Hornig Capital …
  
  
• July 2016: New York New Developments
• New Developments U.S. commercial real estate values continue to experience a slowdown in growth in 2016. Despite the slight uptick, property value appreciation has slowed significantly, after near-double-digit gains in each of the past few years. Cap rates have stopped declining. The City Council approved plans to rezone portions of the Financial District that will allow landlords to fill unused space with retail. 20 buildings along Water Street can fill in 110,000 square feet of pedestrian arcades. In exchange, the landlords are required to upgrade nearby plazas and any of the arcades larger than 7,500 square feet must go through …
  
  
• June 2016: New York New Developments
• New Developments Apple is in talks with 767 Fifth Avenue's owners to take all or part of FAO Schwarz' former 61,000-square-foot space. Apple is looking to take over the space permanently, but is balking at paying market-rate rent. Rates for retail spaces in that section of Fifth Avenue range from about $2,700 to $4,450 per square foot. Related Companies is to receive $88 million in financing from Deutsche Bank to fund 300 Lafayette Street in Soho. Related received a $69 million construction loan and a $19 million project loan to fund the seven-story, 80,000-square-foot office and retail development. The building …
  
  
• May 2016 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• The first quarter of 2016 saw strength in both office leasing volume and effective rents, though with a continued rise in landlord concessions. The average effective rent in Manhattan grew 3% quarter-over-quarter through the first three months of this year to $68.61 per square foot, up more than 17% from $58.41 per square foot in first quarter of last year. The upcoming 12-month forecast predicts a decline in effective rents as Manhattan office market's prospects decline. Manhattan office leasing continues to see steady volume of leasing between $80 to $100 per square foot while leasing volume above $100 per square …
  
  
• April 2016: New York New Developments
• New Developments Bizzi& Partners, Michael Shvo and New Valley raised $175 million through the EB-5 program from the Chinese for their 91-story tower at 125 Greenwich Street. The developers were about halfway to reaching their goal through the EB-5 program.Vornado plans to combine its One Penn and Two Penn Plaza office buildings to form a 4.2 million-square-foot complex. New renderings for the combined building of one and two Penn plaza show a new glass facade and canopy over Seventh Avenue from Penn Station revealing a reorganized lower-level retail space.Banks are exercising more caution when it comes to financing commercial real …
  
  
• April 2016 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Manhattan office leasing has gotten off to a good start in 2016, with both leasing activity and asking rents on the rise through February. Manhattan office leasing exceeded 2 million square feet in each of the first two months, a 3.2% jump from the first two months of 2015. Asking rents in all three major Manhattan submarkets also increased from last year, taking overall Manhattan asking rents to $72.80 per square foot, compared to $69.46 per square foot through February 2015. The Downtown office market, in particular, saw asking rents top $60 per square foot for the first time ever. …
  
  
• March 2016 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Manhattan office and retail leasing has been slow and the stock market is making companies nervous. Both office and retail leasing volume were down last month compared to the month-over-month and year-over- year figures. Office leasing activity was down about 1 million square feet from both December and January 2015. The retail market this year will be slow with some predicting a drop in tourism and others noticing that tenants are jittery over high rents. Manhattan retail leasing ended 2015 on a high note, even as availability rates crept up. But January's preliminary figures show a reversal of that leasing …
  
  
• March 2016: New York New Developments
• New Developments Joseph Beninati's Bauhouse Group filed Friday for Chapter 11 bankruptcy for the LLC entity that owns the 3 Sutton Place development site in Midtown. There is an upcoming foreclosure auction by Gamma's who holds more than $180 million in debt on the property at 426-432 East 58th Street. Bauhouse defaulted on nearly $129 million in loans last month that it had received from Gamma, led by Richard Kalikow, for its planned 68-story, Norman Foster-designed condo tower, also known as 3 Sutton Place. The $4 billion World Trade Center Transportation Hub is about to open. It will connect to …
  
  
• February 2016: New York New Developments
• New Developments Water Street in the Financial District is a pedestrian wasteland. The BID aims to change that with a retail makeover. A re-zoning could make way for 167,357 square feet of new retail space, most of which would be built into existing arcade space on the ground floors of various buildings. It is essential to the revitalization of Lower Manhattan. The top 25 office tenants in Manhattan take up more than 56 million square feet of space, with JPMorgan Chase occupying 4.67 million square feet and Citigroup, occupying 4.49 million square feet. The City of New York occupies 7.22 …
  
  
• February 2016: New York Buildings For Sale
• New York Buildings sold Billy Macklowe sold a majority stake in his 12-story office building at 156 William Street to LaSalle Investment Management for around $55 million. LaSalle closed on a majority interest in the 250,000-square-foot building December 31st, with William Macklowe Co. retaining a minority and managing stake in the property. Macklowe also sold two commercial condominium units at 156 William Street to an independent children's school for $27.2 million. The building is located a few blocks from the school's main campus at 241 Water Street. William Macklowe Co. acquired 156 William Street from private equity firm Capstone Equities …
  
  
• January 2016: New York Buildings For Sale
• New Developments Retail:Overseas retail Brands operate 39% of the stores on Fifth and Madison Avenues and in Soho. Of the 906 retailers, Soho is the most nationally-diverse area, with 24 countries represented. Fifth Avenue had 17 non-U.S. outlets and Madison Avenue had 13. Italianstores had the largest number of stores in those areas.Footlocker and Nike signed leases for large spaces on Broadway. Footlocker signed a $15 million deal to lease 36,000 square feet at 1460 Broadway and Nike signed a $16 million lease for 55,000 square feet at 529 Broadway.Gap signed two leases at 1514 Broadway, into two stores for …
  
  
• January 2016: New York New Developments
• New Developments Retail:Overseas retail Brands operate 39% of the stores on Fifth and Madison Avenues and in Soho. Of the 906 retailers, Soho is the most nationally-diverse area, with 24 countries represented. Fifth Avenue had 17 non-U.S. outlets and Madison Avenue had 13. Italianstores had the largest number of stores in those areas.Footlocker and Nike signed leases for large spaces on Broadway. Footlocker signed a $15 million deal to lease 36,000 square feet at 1460 Broadway and Nike signed a $16 million lease for 55,000 square feet at 529 Broadway.Gap signed two leases at 1514 Broadway, into two stores for …
  
  
• December 2015: New York New Developments
• New Developments AvalonBay Communities is planning a new 33-story, mixed-use residential tower at the site of the former American Bible Society located in Lincoln Square. The building will house 160 apartments. There will also be 34,000 square feet of retail space on the lower levels.Vornado Realty Trust lauded a third quarter that saw it sign seven Manhattan office leases at asking rents of over $100 per square foot. Vornado completed 43 office leasing deals totaling 509,000 square feet in the third quarter at an average starting rent of $79.80 per square foot. The total year-to-date leasing activity was nearly 1.7 …
  
  
• December 2015: New York Buildings For Sale
• New York Buildings sold The Dermot Company is in contract to buy a Kips Bay apartment building from AvalonBay Communities for $175 million, part of its effort to transition into the luxury market. A majority of the 209 units in the building located at 377 East 33rd Street are occupied. The 23-story building consists of 185,549 square feet of residential space and 19,000 square feet of commercial space, which is currently leased by New York University.Forest City Enterprises has agreed to sell its development site at 625 Fulton Street in Downtown Brooklyn to Simon Dushinsky's Rabsky Group for $158 million. …
  
  
• November 2015: New York New Developments
• 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 …
  
  
• August 2015: New York Buildings For Sale
• NYC Buildings For Sale The Related Cos. is considering selling a stake in its 10 Hudson Yards office tower now that the building is almost fully leased. The developer is in discussions with Boston Consulting Group to take about 175,000 square feet at 10 Hudson Yards, which would boost the building to near full occupancy before its scheduled completion early next year. A stake sale would allow Related and equity partner Oxford Properties Group to capitalize on the building's value and provide funds to finance further construction at the 28-acre, $20 billion development. Ian Bruce Eichner is shopping around his …
  
  
• July 2015: New York New Developments
• New York University's campus expansion plans to expand the school by about 2 million square feet in Greenwich Village hasve been approved by Tthe New York State Court of Appeals.s gave an approval to New York University's campus expansion plans to expand the school by about 2 million square feet in Greenwich Village. Neighborhood activists sued to prevent the expansion, claiming it used land that was permanently designated for public park use. The plan will create new high rises on two blocks between West Third and Houston Streets and La Guardia Place and Mercer Street. FAO Schwarz is close to …
  
  
• July 2015: New York Buildings For Sale
• New York Buildings sold Thor Equities sold a Midtown development site at 520 Fifth Avenue to Ceruzzi Properties and an unidentified Chinese partner for $275 million, after purchasing it for $150 million in 2011. Ceruzzi , a Fairfield, Conn.-based real estate investor, plans to follow through with Sitt's plans to develop for a 71-story residential, hotel and retail tower on the site. The plot has approximately 300,000 buildable square feet, between 43rd and 44th streets and has been vacant since two prewar buildings were demolished there when purchased the site. Real estate investor Arthur Shapolsky is in contract to buy …
  
  
• April 2015: New York New Developments
• New Developments The Howard Hughes Corp. has just struck a deal with Edison Properties that allows the former to build a large mixed-use building straddling the border of the South Street Seaport Historic District.Community Board 5 will look to decide whether or not to extend the Madison Square North Historic District. Currently, the borders of the district are 25th and 29th streets and Sixth and Madison avenues. Under a new proposal which is in front of the board now, the district would be extended north to 34th Street and from Broadway to Park Avenue South.New renderings of Citigroup's planned headquarters …
  
  
• March 2015: NYC New Developments
• Major Developments Manhattan Borough President and a City Council member have been talking to developers to find a new plan for the historic South Street Seaport site to prevent a 494-foot tower from being built.The city is looking to revamp a program where property owners can transfer unused air rights to others. -The requirements are so difficult that only 10 successful transfers have been made out of almost 1,000 landmarks.. Those transfers took place in Midtown or Lower Manhattan. The NY state's attorney general's office is closing a 36-story, illegal hotel owned by an affiliate group. The property at 49 …
  
  
• March 2015: New York Buildings For Sale
• NYC Buildings For Sale General Growth Properties is putting an 85,000 square feet of fully-leased Noho office space up for sale located a 200 Lafayette Street.Just three years after paying $360 million for an office tower at 575 Lexington Avenue, Normandy Real Estate Partners is looking to sell.The Chetrit Group is seeking a buyer for its Hudson Yards development site, but in the interim, the firm is planning on spending $29 million to more than double the buildable square footage the property allows as-of-right.433 Fifth Avenue is for sale asking $30 million for a six-story Midtown commercial building. The 17,000-square-foot …
  
  
• February 2015: NYC New Developments
• Mitsui Fudosan started construction on 55 Hudson Yards. Its $1.4 billion office tower which is part of the 28-acre megaproject on Manhattan's West Side.Property Markets Group is planning to convert a four-story commercial building at 548 West 22nd Street into a 19-story residential development.Brookfield Office Properties said the total development cost for the first of its two Manhattan West office towers is more than $2 billion.A joint venture between Madison Equities, Building and Land Technology (BLT) and Joseph's Sitt Thor Equities received a $275 million construction loan to acquire and complete the gut renovation of 212 Fifth Avenue. BRP Corp. …
  
  
• January 2015: NYC New Developments
• New Developments A new building by Cape Advisors at 535 Greenwich Street would have 26 floors and 116 condo units, on an L-shaped lot. The 57,500-square-foot warehouse site with 42,500-square-feet of buildable air rights. Kaled Management filed plans for a 10-story apartment building at 711 West End Avenue, also known as 306 West 95th Street. Alchemy Properties unveiled plans for a new 24-story tower in NoMad at 846-850 Sixth Avenue. It will contain 52 residences totaling 105,973 square feet or 2,000 square each condo. The tower will rise 316 feet and have a 3,100 square feet retail space. Demolition permits …
  
  
• December 2014: NYC New Building Developments
• New Developments The prices of U.S. commercial buildings are higher than the peak in 2007. Since January 2010, the Moody's/RCA Commercial Property Price Indices has seen a climb of 40 percent.The Bronx borough president's South Bronx waterfront redevelopment project looks to be moving forward.A Movie theater chain is on the search for eight retail spaces in New York City and on Long Island to either lease to buy.Prior to constructing 55 Hudson Yards the 1.3 million square feet office development, the developer Related will have to pay up to $180 million to buy the building bonuses that help in the …
  
  
• October 2014: NYC New Building Developments
• New Developments Microsoft's Stores move to Fifth Avenue is official. The software and video game company confirmed that it will open a flagship at 677 Fifth Avenue as part of a continued expansion of the company's retail presence. Microsoft will occupy 8,700-square-foot across two-floors at the Fifth Avenue location..The boutique fitness scene seems to be pushing out many mid-tier players, snapping up a growing number of leases and paying good rents for commercial landlords.New York City's tech firms are bumping into a new problem: a lack of open office space. Many of these companies rent offices in the city's old …
  
  
• September 2014: Manhattan New Developments
• New Developments The city approved Gregg Singer's plan to convert a former Alphabet City public school into a college dormitory. The landmarked building aka P.S. 64 is locateded at 605 East 9th Street. The Department of Buildings approved Singer's plan exam for the conversion.The city's last Office Depot will shut its doors near Times Square at the end of the year. Manhattan building owners keep building even taller buildings. The trick is to bring record height skyscrapers with the minimum of big chunks of useless hidden space. The Bank of America tower at 1111 Avenue of the Americas, which is …
  
  
• August 2014 New York Buildings Purchased & For Sale
• New York Buildings sold A Hong Kong-based Investment firm, bought SpringHill Suites by Marriott in Midtown for $82 million. Hidrock Realty sold the 173-room, Gene Kaufman-designed property at 25 West 37th Street for $82 million. The hotel opened last year.Madison Realty Capital has teamed with RWN Real Estate Partners to purchase a pair of buildings along Frederick Douglas Boulevard in Harlem for about $30 million.Real estate investment firm KUB Capital is in contract to acquire a one-story Soho baby stroller store and adjacent parking lot for a sum of $50 million.A White Plains, N.Y.-based real estate investment trust is in …
  
  
• July 2014: New York New Developments
• A Private Upper East Side girls' school sent a letter to parents saying the school has been reviewing 20 sites that would accommodate the school's 700 students. The K through 12th grade school has operated out of a 12-story brick building at 610 East 83rd Street since 1929.The Bauhouse Group has recently secured a $35 million construction loan from Doral Bank to finance its condominium-and-retail project in Chelsea. The developers acquired a 35,000-square-foot, six-story warehouse at 515 West 29th Street for $24.4 million, and {dynamic_word3} three additional parcels of air rights for a total of $6 million. Permits have been …
  
  
• May 2014 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings For Sale A West Side’s Hudson Yards development site, nearby parcel could sell more than $100 million. A nonprofit organization is selling a landmarked church for $50 million. The Federation of Protestant Welfare Agencies, the owner of the Church Missions House at 281 Park Avenue South, is looking to sell the century-old building to fund its services, including advocacy and management assistance for more than 200 churches and social-service groups. An affiliate of Walter & Samuels is looking to sell an Upper West Side parking garage site, which is being marketed as a potential redevelopment into condominiums. The 7,700-square-foot …
  
  
• May 2014 New York New Developments
• Major Developments Duane Reade recently vacated a location next to department store H&M; and is now on the market. The unofficial asking rent for the property is nearly $8 million per year. Commune Hotels & Resorts, a San Francisco-based joint partnership between Thompson Hotels and Joie De Vivre Hotels, has plans to develop two more hotels in Manhattan. One will operate under the Thompson Hotel brand, while the other will have a different hotel brand. The properties, for which Commune has already inked deals, are looking to open in 2016. The lineup for Westfield Group’s central shopping hall within the …
  
  
• April 2014 New York Buildings For Sale
• NYC Buildings For Sale New York Foundling is asking $47.5 million for a four-story Greenwich Village building it bought for $3 million about 12 years ago. The 14,540-square-foot property at 27 Christopher Street, near Waverly Place, has served as a nursing school and parochial school. The space currently houses the Vincent J. Fontana Center for Child Protection, an organization that offers training to child-care workers.A 20,000-square-foot, multi-level retail space at the base of building at 95 Madison Avenue is for sale.Hiro Real Estate and Goldman Sachs’ landmarked tower at 150 East 42nd Street, also known as the Socony-Mobil Building, is …
  
  
• April 2014 New York New Developments
• New Developments The planned performing-arts center at the World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan has stiff competition for funds. The $469 million dollar project now sits in limbo while the new Mayor, Bill de Blasio, comes to a decision about the future of the planned center.The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey board of commissioners are fighting over subsidies for 3 World Trade Center, the 80-story, $2.3 billion tower in the Financial District. The project is currently stalled. Developer Larry Silverstein and Port Authority’s Vice Chair are pushing for the subsidies that they said would allow for construction …
  
  
• March 2014 New York Buildings For Sale
• New York Buildings sold The ELO Organization, a developer that owns the site of gentlemen’s club Rick’s Cabaret, has acquired a 12-story Garment District office building for $29.6 million from the Eretz Group. The 44,300-square-foot property at 39-41 West 38th Street. Asking rents were an average $38 per square foot at the property, International buyers purchased $5.5 billion worth of Manhattan office towers last year, from China, Canada and the United Arab Emirates. Last year’s sales were twice as much as the previous record of $3 billion in 2007. Fosun from China bought One Chase Manhattan Plaza, for over $700 …
  
  
• February 2014 New York Buildings For Sale
• NYC Buildings For Sale Vornado Realty Trust is asking roughly $650 million for its 20-story office tower at 1 Park Avenue. The real estate investment trust saved the 925,000-square-foot tower from foreclosure in 2011 after paying $180 million to recapitalize and gain control of it from Norman Sturner’s Murray Hill Properties.A Financial District development site that will allow for a 264,200-square-foot residential tower or hotel is on the market for an undisclosed price. The site at 45 Broad Street once belonged to Kent Swig, but he was forced to turn it over in 2011 after defaulting on a loanA 1.2 …
  
  
• February 2014 New York New Developments
• New Developments A Brooklyn fashion networking company away is moving into Manhattan. Manufacture NYC, a program that gives budding designers access to industrial sewing machines and design software, conducted an exhaustive search for a budget-friendly spot in Brooklyn before finally giving up and settling on a space in Manhattan’s Garment District. 7-Eleven is trying to gain acceptance in Manhattan. Since entering Manhattan in 2011 the number of locations has quadrupled from eight to 37 stores.Hospitals are increasingly opening full-service walk-in clinics in an effort to reduce inpatient costs. As a result, outpatient medical facilities are cropping up throughout the city. …
  
  
• February 2014 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Chinese Real estate investors were the largest investors in New York City in the world Increased availability of debt and an uptick in office rents drove demand for large Manhattan office towers in 2013. The top 10 priciest building sales of the year included nine office buildings — a threefold increase over the three office towers that cracked the top 10 list in 2012. Sales volume for all New York City properties could reach a record $63 billion this year, soaring 68 percent from last year. The dollar volume of New York City investment property trades is up 35 percent …
  
  
• January 2014 NYC Buildings For Sale
• NYC Buildings For Sale The Rhinelander Children’s Center at 350 East 88th, an Upper East Side townhouse owned by the nonprofit Children’s Aid Society, is for sale, asking $20 million. The four-story, 15,405-square-foot site is 50 feet wide. School programs have included preschool, summer camp and after-school care. Verizon is selling a former telephone-exchange building on West 36th Street near Seventh Avenue as a potential hotel site.Bank of New York Mellon is looking to downsize, and is considering a sale of its 52 story headquarters at 1 Wall Street. Chinese Christian Herald Crusades has put their building at 48 Allen …
  
  
• January 2014: New York New Developments
• NYC New Developments Brookfield Property Partners has increased its cash offer to buy Brookfield Office Properties to roughly $5.1 billion. Brookfield Office's board plans to recommend to shareholders to accept this new offer. In place of cash, shareholders can receive one limited partnership unit under the offer. In September, Brookfield Property's offer was valued at $5 billion. Hotel developer Zelig Weiss is planning a new 183-room hotel to Wythe Avenue in Williamsburg. The 150,000-square-foot building will be located at 55 Wythe Avenue. Citibank signed a lease worth more than $1 billion to renew its 2.7 million-square-foot lease in a two-building …
  
  
• December 2013 NYC Buildings For Sale
• New York City Buildings For Sale Jeff Greene has switched tactics in Hudson Square. Rather than build a 140,000-square-foot condominium project at 100 Vandam Street, he has decided to sell the parcel for $150 million, or three times what he paid for last year. The move follows a contentious rezoning of the area that will allow for bigger residential developments. India-based Sahara Group is trying to unload the iconic Plaza Hotel along with the Dream Downtown Hotel in Manhattan and Grosvenor House in London, and has received a $1.6 billion offer from a Middle Eastern group for the luxury hotel …
  
  
• December 2013: New York City New Developments
• New York City New Developments The state Public Authorities Control Board gave unanimous approval to the Empire State Development Corporation's $225 million National Urban League complex in Harlem. The project will include a civil rights museum, affordable housing and commercial space. Construction at 125th Street site will begin after the expiration of tenants' leases in 2015. The businesses currently occupying the site can apply for a low-interest loan for relocation services. However, lawsuits may still delay the complex.The Metropolitan Transportation Authority is looking to increase revenue by increasing the number of retail stores at subway stations and converting small spaces …
  
  
• November 2013 New York Buildings for Sale
• NYC Buildings For Sale A West 39th Street development site that could support a 60-room limited-service hotel has hit the market. The site at 335 West 39th Street, located between Eighth and Ninth avenues, will allow for a 44,437 square-foot-building by combining its current zoning entitlement with extra air-rights acquired through the city’s Hudson Yards district improvement bonus.A firm founded by former executives from SL Green Realty and Broadway Real Estate Partners is looking to unload a 12-story Chelsea office building that could fetch as much as $90 million , or almost double the purchase price paid during the real …
  
  
• November 2013: NY New Developments
• NY New Developments Harlem's rapid development and emergence as a viable tourist and business destination has suddenly led to a spike in the demand for hotels in the area, so much so that the neighborhood is now short of about 1,500 hotel rooms. Even future growth in the hotel industry will not be able to meet demand. Although two hotels are in the works with a 210-room property near the old Victoria Theater on 125th Street and a 230-room property near Columbia University's West Harlem expansion. The Landmarks Preservation Commission has recently voted in favor of the Nordstrom tower cantilever, …
  
  
• October 2013 NYC Buildings For Sale
• NYC Buildings For Sale The ground lease for the Time Hotel, the 192-room boutique Theater District property formerly owned by hotelier Vikram Chatwal, is to hit the foreclosure auction block. Discussions between Hampshire Hotels and special servicer have collapsed.The owner of three adjacent parcels at the corner of 42nd Street and Ninth Avenue near Times Square has put the site on the market, expecting offers of about $2 million per year in triple net rent, meaning the tenant pays taxes and other expenses.Millennium Partners, a developer of luxury mixed-use properties, is seeking a buyer for the 335,000-square foot Ritz-Carlton Hotel …
  
  
• October 2013: NYC New Developments
• NYC New Developments Ace Hotel is converting a 10-story building at 225 Bowery into a hotel, despite earlier plans to turn it into apartments. The Lower East Side building’s owner, the Salvation Army Chinese Community Center, will close within the year. Ace is serving as a silent partner and developer on this and the Jarmulowsky Bank project at 52 Canal Street. That development, from DLJ Real Estate Capital Partners, is slated to be a 12-story, 105-unit hotel, and will be operated by Ace under a different name.Fairway Market is coming to the World Trade Center neighborhood. The market just signed …
  
  
• September 2013: NYC Buildings For Sale
• NYC Buildings For Sale Developer Centaur Properties has paid $45 million to acquire a West Chelsea site with close to 110,000 square feet of unused air-rights.A developer known for converting old buildings into condominiums has paid $27 million for the former Ridley Department Story on the Lower East Side.Westwood’s company purchased a five-story townhouse for $13.5 million to plant the designer’s New York City flagship. The 12,000 square-foot townhouse at 14 East 55th Street, next to the St. Regis Hotel, will hold the corporate headquarters as well as a Vivienne Westwood retail store and showroom.Northwood Investors paid $150 million for …
  
  
• September 2013: Manhattan New Developments
• Manhattan New Developments Architect Santiago Calatrava has been chosen to design the newGreek Orthodox Archdiocese Church of St. Nicholas at 130 Liberty Street. It will sit just south of the site of the World Trade Center Transportation Hub that the architect also designed..Sheldon Solow clock is running out at his long-dormant, six-acre lot between East 38th and East 41st streets on First Avenue. Mr. Solo could lose his permits and public approvals for a $4 billion project if he does not build a foundation for the office building or one of several apartment towers by this November.The battle to secure …
  
  
• August 2013: New York New Developments
• New York New Developments Brookfield Office Properties has begun construction of a bridge 120,000 square feet for its Manhattan West project. Brookfield will be the first platform on Amtrak rail yards between ninth and 12th avenues. Time Warner has agreed in principle to move in 80-story skyscraper related companies planned for yards at the 10th Avenue and West 33rd Street, capping weeks of speculation on the movement of the media company in Hudson Yards, IMG Worldwide extend its lease at 304 Park Avenue South. And will now occupy 72,080 square feet. The lease also increased its initial term of 10 …
  
  
• June 2013: NYC Buildings For Sale
• NYC Buildings For Sale Hines is selling off two Midtown office properties at 499 Park Avenue and 425 Lexington Avenue for a combined price of more than $1 billion. JPMorgan Asset Management will pay $750 million for 425 Lexington.Quinlan Development Group will pay $4 million for air-rights from God’s Love We Deliver and intends to build a 14-story residential condominium project. The charity wants to sell the development rights to raise funds for a $26 million expansion at 166 Sixth Avenue, at Spring Street.Verizon is planning on selling or leasing around half the space inside its 31-story headquarters. The company …
  
  
• June 2013 New York City New Developments
• NY New Developments The Federal Department of Transportation will give New York $185 million to help build a rail tunnel under the Related Companies’ Hudson Yards project that will allow for high-speed train service between Manhattan and Newark, N.JTwo recent Plaza District office leases have broken new price records, being the most expensive office leases since 2008. Hedge fund Ruane, Cunniff & Goldfarb and the Brazil-based Banco Itaú will pay just under $200 per square foot for space at 9 West 57th Street and the GM Building.The Lower East Side is getting a new 12-story, 44,000-square-foot, 38-unit residential building at …
  
  
• June 2013 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• The bulk of major retail corridors in Manhattan have seen as high as 55% annual jumps in average asking rents compared to the previous year. Developers are planning nearly 15 million square feet of new office space in the Hudson Yards area in the 30s on the Far West Side. The new projects expected to rise over the next decade include the Related Companies
  
  
• May 2013: NYC New Developments
• NYC New Developments Waterman Interests has signed a new 75-year deal with Benenson Capital Partners for the master lease at 400 Park Avenue. The Benenson family has owned the East 54th Street site since 1971. In 2010, Waterman along with some institutional investors paid $35 million to RFR Realty for the leasehold on the 270,000-square-foot property. At the time, the leasehold had 17 years remaining. Manhattan hotels have been popping up especially in the area around 29th Street. . Now there are nearly a dozen hotels clustered on and around 29th Street, including the trendy Ace Hotel, which opened in …
  
  
• April 2013 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• About two million square feet of space at the World Financial Center is expected come to market, due to lease rollovers by Nomura and Deloitte, along with other tenants. 50 Midtown Manhattan buildings have at least 100,000 square feet of contiguous availability. The average size of these Midtown blocks is just under 310,000 square feet, Hudson Yards Number 1 (has 1 million square feet, 1221 Avenue of the Americas has 780,000 square feet available. these buildings have about 15.5 million square feet available. Four of the 50 blocks are subleases, and 46 are direct by landlord. 40 of the 50 …
  
  
• April 2013: Manhattan New Developments
• Manhattan New DevelopmentsThe Hudson Yards area is shaping up to be something of an office-{dynamic_word2} battleground, with the Moinian Group, Extell Development, the Related Companies and Brookfield Office Properties hunting for office tenants. Moinian's proposed 1.8 milllion-square-foot 3 Hudson Boulevard. Related's under-construction, 1.7 million-square-foot Coach building at 10th Avenue and 30th Street; and Brookfield's planned Manhattan West, which could bring 5.4 million square feet of office and residential space to Ninth Avenue. Extell has also proposed a 1.7 million-square-foot tower in the area dubbed 1 Hudson Yards. Peebles Corporation will pay $160 million for 346 Broadway, a 13-story building. Peebles …
  
  
• March 2013 New York Buildings For Sale
• NYC Buildings For Sale The nearly 41,600-square-foot Colonial Revival U.S. Post Office location at 217 West 18th Street between Seventh and Eighth avenues is for sale.The SUNY board of trustees voted to close the Cobble Hill-based Long Island College Hospital. The sale of the 200,000-square-foot building, which could be converted into a residential development, may bring up to $500 million.Lehman Brothers is looking to sell its 90 percent stake in 425 Park Avenue. The 31-story, 567,340-square-foot building, located in Midtown East, is to be demolished and replaced with a 650,000-square-foot Norman Foster-designed office tower being developed by L&L Holdings, which …
  
  
• March 2013: New York New Developments
• New York New Developments Acadia Realty Trust has defended its stance on hiring non-union workers for its City Point megaproject and responded to a trade group's accusation that the development exploits the community and wastes taxpayer dollars. They believe that City Point will generate thousands of jobs and enhance Downtown Brooklyn's quality of life. Acadia is committed to maximizing local and minority contracting and employment as they create a LEED-certified development with the affordable housing, retail and entertainment options that the neighborhood well deserves.A trio of Russian entrepreneurs is redeveloping a three-acre sports complex, slated to be the largest in …
  
  
• February 2013: New York City New Developments
• The Federal Emergency Management Agency gave New Yorkers whose homes were devastated by Hurricane Sandy a 30-day extension on applications for home repairs. The Transitional Sheltering Assistance program, which has helped New Yorkers continue living in participating hotels and motels, will also be extended. Governor Cuomo requested that FEMA grant extensions. Alexander McQueen plans to decamp to 747 Madison Avenue. The designer will lease a double-height 3,300-square-foot space owned by Jeff Sutton, paying $1,300 per square foot during the 15-year lease. Fashion label Escada previously took up a portion of the retail space. Before that, Valentino occupied the space during …
  
  
• January 2013 NY New Developments
• NY New Developments Starchitect Norman Foster’s plans for the renovation of the New York Public Library flagship on Fifth Avenue were revealed, with features including a multi-level atrium, Bryant Park views and a teen center. Project construction will kick off this summer and will be completed in 2018. A long-stalled Midtown construction site has started construction again on a residential project at 325 Lexington Avenue. Permits for construction were renewed in July 2011. The new plans call for a ground floor restaurant and bar, 103 apartments with two full-floor penthouses, a club room and a fitness center. Construction may have …
  
  
• November 2012 New York New Developments
• New Developments The Chrysler Building just got a little greener. The Owner has received a LEED gold certification for the 1.2 million-square-foot office tower. Tishman spent two years updating the building’s energy, waste, water and maintenance systems. The upgrades include new plumbing fixtures that will cut the property’s water consumption by 64 percent; a waste-management policy that will ensure 81 percent of the building’s waste is recycled; and a 21 percent reduction in energy usage. The city’s plan to sell of three historic but outdated office buildings in Lower Manhattan, all of which would likely become luxury housing or hotels, …
  
  
• September 2012 New York New Developments
• New Developments The Related Companies has won wage-cutting agreements with some four dozen construction unions in its efforts to save money at the $15 billion development of Hudson Yards. The developer, one of the most outspoken for the need to cut construction costs during contract negotiations with unions last year, got the groups to agree to cut wages and benefit packages by 10 percent to ensure they would be commissioned to work the massive construction project expected to carry on for the next decade. The deal is not yet final.With public support, the Kingsbridge Armory ice rink plan may appear …
  
  
• June 2012 New York New Developments
• Major Developments A judge has rejected a bid by an investment partner at the Domino Sugar Factory to block its partner from recapitalizing the proposed $1.5 billion project. Express has signed for a flagship space in Times Square, believed to be at 1552 Broadway.The first retail stores at the World Trade Center site could open for business by March 2015. Westfield, which has a 50 percent stake in the WTC site’s retail space, said the first retailers will be announced in the first half of next year. The openings would come more than 13 years after the destruction of the …
  
  
• May 2012 New York New Developments
• New Developments Morgan Stanley just signed a lease for almost 1.2 million square feet of space at Brookfield Office Properties Inc.'s 1 New York Plaza in lower Manhattan. The bank, which currently occupies about 816,000 square feet at the building, will expand by an additional 337,000 square feet. The agreement is the largest office lease for a single building in New York since 2008. Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s push to modernize Midtown East office buildings has become a legacy issue as the mayor’s reign whines to a close. Bloomberg wants to re-zone the area bounded by Third and Fifth avenues and …
  
  
• April 2012 New York New Developments
• New Developments A joint venture partnership including New York Ace Hotel owner and GFI Capital Resources Group Gross’ GB Lodging is set to puchase the Temple Court building, a nine-story city landmark at 5 Beekman Street formerly owned by the Chetrit Group and Bonjour Capital.Mayor Michael Bloomberg signed a bill to declare a formal state of emergency in New York City with regard to housing, allowing him to extend rent regulations for another three year even thought there is a Supreme Court challenge The mayor cited a citywide residential vacancy rate of 3.5 percent. Legally, rent regulations must be terminated …
  
  
• March 2012 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Manhattan’s slumping office market is about to be get worse, when 6 million square feet of new office space will be delivered to the market — the most since 1989.The unsteady economy and the compression of the financial services industry have lessened demand for office space recently. Developers point to the city’s growing tech, law and media sectors for relief, though those tenants tend to prefer using smaller space more efficiently to signing for extremely large blocks. The developers of the buildings, 1 World Trade Center, 4 World Trade Center and 51 Astor Place, say they aren’t worried because of …
  
  
• February 2012 New York New Developments
• New York Major Developments The 226-room Courtyard Marriott on East 92nd Street may close this spring, in the wake of two years of legal battles, including a lawsuit against Marriott International. It is scheduled to lay off 59 employees by March 30. Having already ceded some of its demand to recent upstart office markets like Midtown South and downtown Manhattan, Midtown East is the subject of a Department of City Planning review intending to probe whether it needs to incentivize commercial property upgrades in the area Midtown East has more than 70 million square feet of office space, 13 Fortune …
  
  
• December 2011 New York New Developments
• New Developments Local 32BJ, the union representing more than 22,000 commercial building workers in New York City, voted to authorize their bargaining committee to call a strike if necessary. The union has been in contract talks with the Realty Advisory Board on Labor Relations, since November 15th. The union opposes the landlords' proposal to establish a different wage and benefit structure for new hires, which they claim will create a two-tier system designed to push out workers with seniority. If negotiations fail by 12:01 am on Jan. 1, 2012, the union could strikeThe Service Employees International Union Local 32BJ, which …
  
  
• November 2011 New York New Developments
• New Developments The Chelsea Art Museum located at 556 West 22nd Street is about to be replaced by Hewlett-Packard, which has special plans for the building. HP signed a 10-year lease for the entire 34,500 feet inside the three-story museum building at 556 West 22nd Street near 11th Avenue.. Drastic job and spending cuts are in the cards for 2013 for the New York City construction industry, according to a report released today by the New York Building Congress entitled "New York City Construction Outlook 2011-2013." Construction spending is expected to total $27.7 billion this year.The average number of construction …
  
  
• October 2011 New York Buildings For Sale
• New York Buildings sold TIAA-CREF purchased the 280,000-square-foot office building 475 Fifth Avenue from Barclays Capital Real Estate for $144 million or about $514 per square foot. A joint venture of real estate developer Joseph Moinian and Westbrook Capital acquired 475 Fifth Avenue, located at 41st Street, in 2007 for $160 million, but lender Barclays took the property back in 2009 through a deed in lieu of foreclosure.Stonehenge Partners has closed on the 93-unit apartment building at 1143 Second Avenue and 60th Street. Stonehenge paid KFJ Realty $47 million for the six-story building, which includes 15,000 square feet of retail …
  
  
• October 2011 New York New Developments
• New Developments Time Warner is evaluating its plan to possibly move out of the Time Warner Center and consolidate its operations at new headquarters elsewhere to save costs. Time Warner moved to Columbus Circle in 2004, where it had partnered with Related Companies to build the building that is its company headquarters now. Many of its leases, including ones for more than 2 million square feet of space in Midtown, will expire as soon as 2017 and 2018. Since not many buildings could hold all of Time Warner's 6,000 employees in the city, possible alternative options would be Hudson Yards, …
  
  
• August 2011 New York New Developments
• New Developments Lower Manhattan ends string of positive news as BofA shrinks its footprint by 3,000,000 SF and Nomura departs for Midtown The giant, 900,000-square-foot relocation and expansion lease by Nomura Holdings America signed in Midtown late last month punctuated an improved second quarter in the Manhattan office-leasing market. "Midtown, Midtown South and Downtown all recorded positive absorption in the second quarter," Bank of America announced it would give up nearly 3 million square feet in Lower Manhattan, increasing competition for the area's landlords. There was a media flurry last week over word that Coach, the luxury handbag maker, is …
  
  
• July 2011 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• New York City saw almost no job growth in May. The revised gain for May was 10,200 jobs, putting the year-to-date gain at 42,300, up from 38,900 jobs a month earlier. The flat result should be viewed only a small "bump in the road" to recovery rather than a negative shift in momentum. The biggest losses, 2,800 jobs, were in health services. The real estate and hotel sectors added zero jobs.Stephen Ross' Related Companies is currently in talks with nine prospective tenants for its Hudson Yards development, each seeking more than one million square feet of space. Ross said he'll …
  
  
• June 2011 New York New Developments
• New Developments Companies such as Boston Properties and Vornado Realty Trust are in negotiations with potential tenants and may even proceed with construction without securing leases. Boston Properties may be the first to break ground by the end of 2011. The company is finalizing negotiations to anchor a 1 million-square-foot tower at Eighth Avenue and 55th StreetRelated Companies CEO Stephen Ross said he was confident about attracting tenants for the first phase of the development, which will include four million square feet of office space. "I think we're going to surprise people," he said. "We're talking to nine tenants at …
  
  
• June 2011 New York Buildings For Sale
• New York Buildings sold Private real estate management firm ING Clarion Partners bought the 42-unit rental building at 44 Berry Street in Williamsburg for $27 million. The 54,000-square-foot, six-story former quinine factory building was developed by Cayuga Capital Management. The fully-leased building includes six retail spaces on the ground floor. The sale of GLC Group's 16-story condominium building in Clinton Hill has closed, a real estate investment group from New York City and Northern California paid $21 million for the Karl Fischer-designed tower, , when 35 to 40 percent of the 49 units at 163 Washington Avenue were in contract …
  
  
• May 2011 New York New Developments
• Major Developments Mall of America developer Triple Five has reached a deal with lenders and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie's administration to reboot and expand the stalled Xanadu complex in the Meadowlands,. The checkered, 2.4 million-square-foot complex, originally envisioned as a retail and entertainment destination that would rejuvenate East Rutherford, has sat incomplete along the New Jersey Turnpike for years, sapping up $1.9 billion in the process and developing a reputation as the poster child for failed boom-time real estate projects.Real estate investment firms Savanna and Monday Properties are launching a $30 million capital improvement for a 20-story, 260,000-square-foot commercial …
  
  
• March 2011 New York New Developments
• Major Trends The laws that cap rent increases on 1 million city apartments expire in June, and landlord groups, tenant advocates and politicians all agree that they should be extended. Last time the laws were up for a renewal, in 2003, Senate Republicans threatened to let them expire and ended up forcing the Democrats to accept a simple renewal. Now the Democrats think they have a better chance of getting a good deal for tenants. The real estate industry is desperate to renew a tax break known as 421-a, which spurs new apartment building development, and Sheldon Silver believes developers …
  
  
• February 2011 New York New Developments
• New Developments Three years after the Related Cos. began developing its 26-acre Hudson Yards project, the company is now trying to find a tenant willing to commit to occupying at least 600,000 square feet of office space. To land its key tenant, Related is offering either to construct a building and sell it to that company or to provide a big break on the rent. The 12 million-square-foot space, bordered by the High Line and the Hudson River, will run from 10th to 12th avenues and from West 30th to 33rd streets. The $15 billion project is expected to take …
  
  
• September 2010 New York New Developments
• New Developments A deal with Silverstein Properties over how to pay for two towers was approved by the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey. The plan calls for the restoration of the east side of the site to at least street level and the completion of the WTC Transportation Hub. The funding needed for the project is now projected to be between $1.1 billion to $1.3 billion.A crucial City Council subcommittee and committee voted in favor of an office tower at 15 Penn Plaza proposed by developer Vornado Realty Trust. Although opposition to the 1,216-foot-tall tower stemmed from …
  
  
• August 2010 New York New Developments
• New Developments Community Board 7 voted to disapprove Extell's plans for an eight-acre Riverside Center project, unless the developer agrees to build according to some modifications. The plan for the new development that would span 59th to 61st street and West End Avenue to the edge of the West Side Highway includes five skyscrapers, at least 2,500 apartments, 210,000 square feet of retail, a hotel, a movie theater, an underground automobile service center, a new K-8 school and three acres of open space. The Alex is facing an $81.7 million foreclosure suit after Anglo Irish Bank sold the note on …
  
  
• June 2010 New York New Developments
• New Developments New York University may enter the public approval process for its new Silver Towers site, the crown jewel of its wildly controversial 2031 expansion plan. The biggest hurdle for the school will be gaining approval from the Landmarks Preservation Commission, which will have final say on whether NYU can build on the landmark Bleecker Street site. The proposed building will be a "slender pinwheel tower," and is rumored to be planned for a 40-story structure. New York University dropped in on Community Board 3's zoning committee meeting and had little to say about how its 6 million-square-foot expansion …
  
  
• May 2010 New York New Developments
• New Developments Of the many players featured in the high-stakes drama unfolding at Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village, David Tepper, who has bought more than $800 million worth of controlling bonds at the property over the last 18 months, is proving to be one of the most volatile and polarizing. Tepper took legal action to guide the distressed property to his liking. But his attitude toward Stuyvesant Town, one of the biggest commercial-deals-gone-sour, is one of optimism. Tepper sees an opportunity for bankruptcy and restructuring, a move he believes would save millions. The city's Economic Development Corp. issued two …
  
  
• March 2010 New York New Developments
• Major Developments Affordable housing programs throughout the city are facing trouble unloading units. The city has been praised across the country for its efforts to provide affordable housing to lower- and middle-income households but, while the low-income rentals continue to thrive, the ownership program is struggling, which could be seen as good since it ultimately means less foreclosures.Larry Silverstein believes his commitment to the World Trade Center redevelopment project can be measured not only by his enthusiasm, but also by his own cash. The developer recently proposed several different financing options to the Port Authority of New York & New …
  
  
• March 2009 New York New Developments
• The New York State Appellate Division ruled in favor of the Atlantic Yards project today in a lawsuit that challenged the project's environmental review process. Mayor Michael Bloomberg released a statement in support of the project, saying it will "create thousands of jobs and generate badly needed tax revenue." Bloomberg said the court's approval is a big step towards the start of construction for the delayed project.Proskauer Rose backed out of taking space at Mort Zuckerman's 250 West 55th Street, and now is in talks to move in again. Zuckerman put the 1 million-square-foot project on hold when the law …
  
  
• April 2008 New York New Developments
• New DevelopmentsThe City Council approved the rezoning for Sheldon Solow's $4 billion development on the East River, making the way for seven towers to rise on nine acres of First Avenue from East 35th Street to East 41st Street. The project will create about 3,000 apartments, 1 million square feet of commercial and 69,000 square feet of retail. The development will include affordable housing, a public school and five acres of public space. Gov. David Paterson and Mayor Michael Bloomberg have hailed Tishman Speyer's plan for developing the MTA's 26-acre Hudson Yards. Tishman Speyer owns Rockefeller Center, a fact that …
  
  
• March 2008 New York New Developments
• New DevelopmentsThe amount of leased in the fourth quarter of 2007 was 34.5 % lower than the amount of leased in the fourth quarter of 2006. Average asking rents fell by 45 cents to $61.46 per square foot in the fourth quarter, down from $61.91 per square foot in the third quarter.In 2007, the office market in Downtown Manhattan had a lower overall vacancy rate than the Midtown market for the first time since 2001. The year-end report showed that Downtown had a 7.6 percent vacancy rate last year, compared to a 7.7 percent rate in Midtown. Downtown saw 412,108 …
  
  
• February 2008 New York New Developments
• New DevelopmentsNew York City's office market has gained on the world's two most expensive cities, London and Hong Kong. London vaulted over Hong Kong to become the world's priciest office market with rent for Class A hitting $265 per square foot. The peak rate in New York City's Midtown reached $225 per square foot. The next most expensive U.S. office markets were San Francisco, with a rate of $110 per square foot; Boston, with a rate of $90 per square foot; and Manhattan's Downtown, with a rate of $65 per square foot. Steven Witkoff, Developer, pulled bid to develop Pier …
  
  
• January 2008 New York New Developments
• New DevelopmentsNew Construction BrooklynAt 75 Flatbush Avenue, a permit to build a 21-story, 108-unit new Flatiron has been issued. The 150,000-square-foot building, which is going up Extension will be 262 feet tall.Developers of the Domino Sugar Refinery, a historic landmark, will be part of an ambitious $1.2 billion, 10-year residential development project.Major Market News Columbia Expansion Approved. The City Council voted to rezone a 35-acre section of Harlem, allowing Columbia University's $7 billion expansion. Columbia plans to expand onto 17 of the rezoned acres, bounded by Broadway, Riverside Drive, West 129th Street and West 133rd Street.The Federal Reserve's proposal to …
  
  
• December 2007 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Demand for Manhattan office space exceeds the pace of new construction. As a result office vacancy rates continue to decline and rental rates continue their upward climb. New DevelopmentsThe Federal government has approved $1.3 billion for the Second Avenue subway's first phase. The first phase is expected to cost more than $4 billion and is scheduled to open in 2014. A new television transmission may make unnecessary the 408-foot spire planned to broadcast tower on of roof the Freedom Tower. If not built, the tower will be reduced from its symbolic 1,776 feet to 1,368 feet tall, the height of …