The De Blasio Administration

• November 2023 New York New Developments
• Major Developments: New York City building owners commercial janitorial workers’ union contract expires at year’s end. Wages and health benefits will play prominently into the labor fight. Hotel occupancy in Times Square and Midtown West hit 88%, a post-pandemic high. The average daily room rate is up more than 10% from last year. Almost a quarter of the $1.9 billion in closed hotel sales in Manhattan this year have come to Times Square. Industrial Space in the Bronx, Brooklyn, Staten Island and Queens had an asking rent of $26.02 per square foot in the third quarter. New York Community Bank …
  
  
• January 2022 New York New Developments
• Market Overview: The Terminal 1 project at John F. Kennedy International Airport is ready to take off with a new $9.6 billion price. The terminal has been restructured, moving forward after a two-year delay. A consortium led by the Carlyle Group along with Johnson Loop Capital Infrastructure and Union Labor Life Insurance Company will finance the development, which is now expected to break ground in mid-2022. The latest cost estimate includes $7.2 billion for design and construction and $2.3 billion in “financing and other costs.” The new Terminal 1 will include 23 international gates across 2.4 million square feet, spanning …
  
  
• 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 …
  
  
• 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 …
  
  
• 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 …
  
  
• December 2018 New York New Developments
• Major Developments: After months of speculation, Amazon made its long-awaited HQ2 announcement. The Seattle-based company will divide its second headquarters between Crystal City in Virginia and Long Island City in New York. New York State plans to dole out $1.7 billion in tax credits and grants to Amazon for choosing Long Island City. This month’s top office leases accounted for more square footage than last month. The top 10 office lease deals last month totaled 1.9 million square feet, larger than September’s top 10 leases, which totaled 1.1 million square feet. City of New York signed the largest lease of …
  
  
• June 2018 New York New Developments
• New York Major Developments: The top 10 office leases totaled 1.9 million square feet, much larger than the previous month’s top 10 leases, which totaled 996,000 square feet. Pfizer signed a lease for 800,000 square feet of office space at 66 Hudson Boulevard. Latham & Watkins signed a lease for the 25th through the 34th floors, totaling for 407,000 square feet at 1271 Sixth Avenue. Jet.com inked a lease for 200,000 square feet of warehouse space at 1055 Bronx River Avenue. The asking rent was $22.00 per square foot. McDermott Will & Emery signed a 20-year lease for around 106,000 …
  
  
• May 2018 New York New Developments
• New York Major Developments: 666 Fifth Avenue announced that the tower lost $25 million in 2017, largely due to the debt service on the property outweighing its net income. Chinese developer Zhonghong Holdings has defaulted on more than $174 million debt, just one year after the company tried to buy a senior living facility chain. Brookdale Senior Living for $4 billion. Co-working companies have stepped up their game in New York City, increasingly competing with traditional commercial landlords for the same tenants. Sixteen co-working companies have leased 664,000 square feet in the city so far in 2018. Brookfield Property Partners …
  
  
• February 2018 New York New Developments
• New York Major Developments: The supply of hotel rooms in the Financial District grew 10.7% last year, with another 1,917 rooms in the pipeline. Hotels continue to be built despite the softening of the overall hotel market. There are more hotel rooms slated to come online in 2018 than any year since, at least 2000. Developers have already delivered 26,193 rooms since 2013. Kushner Companies’ retail condominium at the old New York Times building could be facing challenges in the wake of Guy Fieri’s restaurant closing. Guy’s American Kitchen & Bar, a yet-to-be opened food hall run by celebrity chef …
  
  
• 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 …
  
  
• 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 …
  
  
• 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 …
  
  
• July 2016: New York Buildings For Sale
• New York Buildings sold Harry Macklowe and Qatari investment bank QInvest closed on a deal to buy 432 Park Avenue's retail space for $411.1 million. CIM Group is developing the 1,396-foot condo tower in partnership with Macklowe the seller. The cube will include 6,600 square feet of retail space and will be connected to 20,000 square feet of retail space in the tower itself through a 30,000-square-foot underground concourse. Global Holdings is in contract to buy 1250 Broadway, an office tower owned by Jamestown and Murray Hill Properties, for $565 million. 1250 Broadway is a 39-story, 721,000-square-foot tower. The contract …