The Meatpacking District

• 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 …
  
  
• August 2023 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings for Sale: In the first quarter, investors spent less than $500 million buying Manhattan office properties, down from $5 billion in the first quarter of last year. Värde Partners aims to force the sale of Public Hotel. Steve Witkoff and Ian Schrager appeared to have gotten a handle on the debt at their Public Hotel after falling behind on their mortgage. Witkoff and Schrager are facing a UCC foreclosure on their equity in the 367-room hotel at 215 Chrystie Street. The partners owe more than $86 million in mezzanine debt from Värde Partners. The sale is scheduled for Sept. …
  
  
• 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 …
  
  
• November 2021 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Office: The Durst Organization signed Venable LLP for a 15-year lease for nearly 158,000 square feet, at One Five One, formerly known as 4 Times Square. Prospective tenants are looking for 6.5 million square feet of office space up 64% from the first quarter of this year. Crédit Agricole’s 167,000-square-foot relocation within 1301 Sixth Avenue. BDO USA’s 143,000-square-foot lease at Tishman Speyer’s 200 Park Avenue. Interpublic Group of Companies 514,000 square feet at 100 West 33rd Street. Fried, Frank, Harris Shriver & Jacobson 400,000 square feet at 1 New York Plaza. City of New York 313,000 square feet at 60 …
  
  
• March 2021 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Manhattan Office: Office subleases increased to 29 million square feet, well over the 27 million square feet recorded during the financial crisis in 2009. The office availability rate rose for the eighth consecutive month to a record-high of 14.9%, up 0.6% points from the previous month of 4.9 points from a year ago. Leasing volume was 1.9 million square feet, but still 47% below the pre-pandemic monthly average. The average asking rent declined for the seventh consecutive month to $73.65 per square foot per year, the lowest average since April 2018. Only about 14-15% of employees were in their New …
  
  
• 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 …
  
  
• 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 …
  
  
• February 2020 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings Sold: Savanna sold 434 Broadway for more than $103 million to Tokyo Trust Capital Co and MC Real Estate Partners. SL Green Realty bought 707 Eleventh Avenue with plans to attract tech tenants for $90 million. The six-story building had been owned by Kenneth Cole since 2004. Jeff Sutton and Joe Sitt have gone into contract to sell 530 Broadway for $400 million, to a partnership led by Michael Shvo’s firm. Wharton is the majority owner of the trio of 11-story buildings at 530-536 Broadway. Healthcare Trust of America bought a two-story medical office building located at 4337 Broadway …
  
  
• 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 …
  
  
• September 2018 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Manhattan Office: This month’s top office leases had more square footage than last month. The top 9 office lease deals totaled 2.3 million square feet, greater than last month’s 1.7 million square feet. Midtown South’s office surpassed Midtown in asking rents for the first time ever. Asking rents in Midtown South climbed 9% year over year to $78.36 per square foot, compared with Midtown’s $77.13. The submarket saw 1.9 million square feet leased in the second quarter, a 42% increase from the five-year quarterly average. small_column_chart_by_brian Manhattan Retail: Retail rents across Manhattan continued to fall in 2018’s second quarter, but …
  
  
• September 2018 New York Buildings For Sale
• NYC Buildings Sold: Invesco buying the office condo at 1745 Broadway from SL Green Realty and Ivanhoe Cambridge for an estimated $633 million (although in transfer documents the price was $596 million). 250 Water Street development site was bought by the Howard Hughes Corp for $183 million. 101 West 57th Street hotel was bought by the Hilton Grand Vacations for $174 million. Michael Shvo has purchased the office portion of 685 Fifth Avenue from General Growth Partners. Shvo has partnered with the Wings Group, BLG Capital and Deutsche Finance America to purchase floors five through 20 of the building for …
  
  
• May 2018 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Manhattan Office The office vacancy rate is expected to remain unchanged this year at 13%, and then climb to 13.2% next year and 13.4% in 2020. Manhattan’s office-leasing market slowed in the first quarter of the year, recorded 7.57 million square feet of deals, down 17.8% from the same time in 2017. Manhattan recorded 37.1 million square feet worth of deals last year, making it the second-strongest year since 2003 second only to 2014’s 37.4 million square feet. small_column_chart_by_brian Manhattan Retail Retail asking rents for direct space fell nearly 20%. Fifth Avenue retail was down to an asking average of …
  
  
• 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 …
  
  
• 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 …
  
  
• September 2017 New York New Developments
• New York Major Developments: Brookfield Property Partners are in talks to become a partner in one of the largest redevelopment projects underway in New York City. Brookfield is negotiating to acquire a stake in the St. John’s Terminal site, which Westbrook Partners and Atlas Capital Partners are planning to transform into a five-tower, 1.7 million-square-foot mixed-use complex. The three-block-long site which consists of north, south and center sections would hold 1,586 rental apartments, offices, a hotel and around 400,000 square feet of retail space next to Hudson River Park’s Pier 40. Manhattan’s hotel market may be nearing the end of …
  
  
• 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 …
  
  
• June 2017 New York Buildings For Sale
• New York Buildings Sold: Kobe Bussan, which operates a chain of supermarkets in Japan, sold two empty lots at 439-443 West 54th Street in Hell’s Kitchen. The buying entity is Yaus Special Clinton District LLC. WanXin Media purchased the Midtown office building and vacant lot at 7-15 West 44th Street for $68 million. WanXin plans to develop a boutique luxury hotel and Chinese cultural center which has 90,000 buildable square feet. If approved, the hotel will include 96 rooms and restaurant space in a 19-story building, seven stories taller and nearly 40,000 square feet larger than the existing building at …
  
  
• 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 …
  
  
• 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 …
  
  
• 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 …
  
  
• 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 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 …
  
  
• 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. …
  
  
• October 2015: New York New Developments
• New Developments The Archdiocese of New York is backing a Midtown East rezoning that would allow St. Patrick's Cathedral to sell its unused air rights to developers. A committee studying the neighborhood's development potential proposed freeing up landmarked properties, like St. Patrick's, to sell air rights anywhere within the rezoned district.Anthony Bourdain is building at Pier 57 in the Meatpacking district, a restaurant complex with 155,000-square foot, 100 culinary stalls and is currently under construction and to be completed in 2016. The Bourdain Market will be the largest of the city's themed restaurant markets.The residents of a co-op building in …
  
  
• September 2015: New York New Developments
• Sam Chang plans to build a 25-story, 175-key hotel on a Garment District development site. The hotelier filed a permit application to build a 60,000-square-foot hotel at 338 West 39th Street, near Ninth Avenue. He bought the 12-story factory building for $22.4 million.The Hakimian Organization is in the process of acquiring 16,000 square feet of air rights from the landmarked Helen Hayes Theatre. This would allow the company to build a 246-key hotel at 250 West 49th Street containing 96,000-square-foot hotel on the property. The plans call for a renovation of the existing eight-story, 58,000-square-foot building, and add another 16 …
  
  
• September 2015 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• The Meatpacking District office market is booming with a 1.8 % vacancy rate to 9 percent in Manhattan as a whole. Google occupies nearly 40 percent of the office space in the area, with a total of 2 million square feet and new tech tenants continue to move in the area. Over the next five years, around 600,000 square feet of new commercial space will open, half will be offices, a 6 percent increase over total office inventory. Manhattan's office market saw positive absorption for the sixth consecutive month, and average asking rent rose to $40.69 per square foot.Downtown and …
  
  
• July 2015 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• There are Deals for large retail spaces are distracting from awareness that pockets of vacancies in some areas of the city may indicateing e that rents have maxed topped out, and could be heading lower soonfor a correction. Sephora Among the recent leaseds was a 20,000-square-foot deal Sephora got on Lower Fifth Avenue and Foot Locker's 36,000-square-foot lease south of the Times Square bow tie. The Meatpacking District, aside from the opening of the Whitney Museum, continues to be the $250 million, 70,000 square-foot lease tenant-of-the-moment. Big deals are happening where asking rents for the three retail spaces are $200 …
  
  
• 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 …
  
  
• June 2015 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Retail The average asking rent for Manhattan's most expensive retail corridor on Fifth Avenue between 49th and 59th streets rose 4 % from $3,420 in fall 2014 to $3,683 this spring. Asking rents for ground-floor retail space along East 57th Street between Fifth and Park avenues were up 60 % from fall 2014. Eight of Manhattan's major retail corridors saw moderate rent growth from the previous quarter. Five of Manhattan's hottest retail corridors saw asking rents get double-digit %age increases year-over-year, with two of them rising over 20 %. Herald Square, 34th Street from Fifth to Seventh avenues, saw rents …
  
  
• June 2015: New York New Developments
• Foot traffic on madison avenue has declined by 200,000 people over the last seven months when the Whitney closed in October. While many luxury retailers still maintain locations there, some of them are global brands that are simply there for the status and are actually losing money on the area rents.The City Council approved plans for One Vanderbilt, the 63-story, 1.6 million-square-foot office tower to be built next to Grand Central Station. The tower will be anchored by TD Bank, with 200,000 square feet. One Vanderbilt will deliver critically-needed, state-of-the-art Class A office space and dramatically upgrade Grand Central's overburdened …
  
  
• February 2015: New York Buildings For Sale
• New York Buildings for Sale A Times Square hotel is hitting the market for. The Comfort Inn Times Square South at 305 West 39th Street is for sale asking $35 million. The property was built in 2007, and has a 93% occupancy rate. Rooms are about $180 per night. The price per room is based is about $448,718.A Court Square development site offering more than 167,000 buildable square feet is on the market for $41.5 million. The site is 11,145 square feet. The properties are located at 23-10 45th Avenue, 45-03 23rd Street; 45-05 23rd Street; 45-07 23rd Street; 45-09 …
  
  
• November 2014: NYC New Building Developments
• New Developments The average Manhattan commercial building sale was smaller year-over-year, though the number of sales so far is on pace to break a 2007 record high. Manhattan saw 328 commercial deals worth $30 billion through September. That marks a 47 percent jump from the 223 sales worth $30.2 billion recorded for all of last year. In 2007, there were 346 deals valued at roughly $48.5 billion.The 40,000-square-foot retail component at TF Cornerstone's 22-story office building in Midtown East is being marketed. The retail space spans several floors and sits at the base of the 164,000-square-foot building at East 60th …
  
  
• October 2014 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• NYC Commercial Real Estate Overview The Manhattan office leasing had a busy summer, with strong demand from the tech sector that is increasingly in expansion mode in Midtown South and beyond. Manhattan Class A office space average asking price of $76.00?RSF, up 8.8% from $69.42 in August of 2013. The borough had an absorption of 1.2 million square feet, and overall availability tumbled below 35 million square feet for the first time since December 2008.Although leasing in the New York City office market is much stronger than last year, There remain large blocks of vacant space in some of the …
  
  
• 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 …
  
  
• April 2014 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Office leasing in Midtown rebounded in February, as employment growth surpassed the 2007 pre-recession peak, and drove demand up and pushed up asking rents.The criteria that office tenants value the most make up the two most basic variables for space in Manhattan, location and the vintage of the building, is undergoing a sea change, creating unpredictable results in pricing.The Meatpacking District area appears to be undergoing a dramatic makeover. One that involves the construction of a number of sleek office towers. In turn, those new structures are attracting a whole new breed of upscale retail tenants into the area.Nonprofit and …
  
  
• 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 …
  
  
• 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 …
  
  
• July 2013: New York City New Developments
• New York City New Developments Internet radio provider Pandora Media has slated a 52,450-square-foot lease at 125 Park Avenue. Warner Music Group is looking at a 225,000-square-foot space at 7 West 34th Street. Warner currently has space at 75 Rockefeller Center, and faces a deadline with its lease expiring next year. Still, the company is also looking over options to move elsewhere.Planet Fitness gym has inked two Manhattan leases in a city expansion effort. The largest contiguous block of class A office space in Midtown will soon come available at 1221 Sixth Avenue. About 537,000 square feet of space will …
  
  
• February 2013 NYC Buildings For Sale
• Buildings For Sale In one of the largest land deals in years, Sheldon Solow has reached an agreement with a consortium led by JDS Development Group to sell a parcel of land overlooking the East River for roughly $200 million. The full-block piece of land is zoned for residential use, and there are intentions to build a 37-story tower and a 47-story tower on the site, with a total of more than 830 units. The deal is being financed primarily by a $125 million loan from UBS. The parcel being sold is the smaller of two plots totaling nine acres …
  
  
• November 2012 New York Buildings For Sale
• NYC Buildings For Sale A Flatiron District office building will hit the foreclosure auction block next month with an outstanding lien of close to $41 million, following the issuance of a foreclosure judgment against the property in September. The building, at 119 West 25th Street, had been owned by Brooklyn-based investors Miriam and Michael Chan before it was placed in receivership. The duo purchased the building for $34 million via an LLC in 2006. The 11-story building, which totals 113,000 square feet and has 15,000 square feet of retail, will hit the block November 17.A parking lot in the Chelsea …
  
  
• 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, …
  
  
• 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 …
  
  
• February 2012 New York Buildings For Sale
• NYC Buildings For Sale The Sapir Organization, the developer of Manhattan's Trump Soho, is planning to put the hotel and its unsold condominium units on the auction block. The auction will likely take place later in the spring.Aby Rosen's RFR Holding is in contract to buy back the debt for far less than the $144.2 million face value at the Midtown development site at 610 Lexington Avenue.Although the vacant property, where Rosen sought to build the Shangri-La Hotel, New York, is in contract to RFR Holding. Several more properties in the William Gottlieb estate have hit the sales market, encouraging …
  
  
• 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 …
  
  
• 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 Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• The vacancy rate for Downtown surpassed the vacancy rate for Midtown for the first time in two years, as several large blocks of space were returned to the market in Lower Manhattan. The vacancy rate for Downtown was 13.5 percent in July, compared to a rate of 12.8 percent for Midtown. A month earlier Midtown had a higher rate. The last time the Downtown rate was higher was in November 2008, when it had a vacancy rate of 10.1 percent while Midtown had a rate of 9.7 percent. It is the historical norm for Downtown to have a higher vacancy …
  
  
• July 2010 New York New Developments
• New York Developments The closure of St. Vincent's Hospital in Greenwich Village dominated the news, neighborhood institution succumbing to financial troubles. Despite the credit crunch, New York-area hospitals are finding ways to fund major expansion projects. Through the support of philanthropists, often from the real estate sector, there's funding to build state-of-the-art health care institutions, keeping New York a world leader in health care. The Port Authority of New York & New Jersey yesterday approved an agreement with the city, under which the city will reimburse the agency up to $44 million for building underground foundations and infrastructure for a …
  
  
• 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 …
  
  
• January 2010 New York New Developments
• New Developments Mort Zuckerman, chairman and CEO of Boston Properties, discussed his outlook on commercial real estate and whether the national recovery is on its way. While he was somewhat pessimistic about the industry as a whole, there are some pockets of the country that are moving toward stabilization. The industry in general is in a fairly weakened condition. In the major cities the commercial real estate is doing reasonably well but in the minor cities they are having more difficulty.Hudson River Park, the five-mile waterfront band stretching from Battery Park to 59th Street, is short on cash and may …
  
  
• December 2009 New York Buildings For Sale
• Manhattan Buildings sold The Volkswagen Group of America has purchased the 265,000-square-foot Potamkin General Motors building at 798-804 11th Avenue between 55th and 56th streets. The space was purchased for $84 million with plans to renovate through a $41 million investment, and will be used as the flagship Manhattan dealership for Audi and Volkswagen. The 24,700-square-foot retail space in the St. Regis New York was sold to a three-way partnership of property managers for $117 million. GFC Fifth Avenue is comprised of Crown Acquisitions, Goldman Properties and the Feil Organization, and they bought the property, located at 2 East 55th …
  
  
• December 2009 New York New Developments
• New Developments Commercial lenders did not throw out all of their standards in the recent cycle of easy credit. When developer Aby Rosen structured his $133 million loan for the acquisition and development of the Shangri-La hotel at 614 Lexington Avenue in 2007, the mortgage document included a personal guaranty to cover losses in the event of a default. Similarly, when Kent Swig negotiated $49 million in loans with Lehman Brothers Holdings to develop a hotel and condo project at 45 Broad Street in the Financial District in 2006 and 2007, the bank demanded a similar guaranty in the mortgage …
  
  
• November 2009 New York New Developments
• Major NYC Developments 11 Times Square, the city's largest office tower, remains entirely unleased more than two years after breaking ground in 2007. Some give the owner little chance of holding on to the 1 million-square-foot building without a significant debt restructuring. They cite the current weak economy, the 25 percent decline in rents, and the cost of the building, a pricey $1,100 per square foot as the reason. There are currently no signed leases for the 40-story glass commercial tower stationed across from the Port Authority terminal, which is three-quarters completed.JPMorgan Chase may hold onto its 60-story office property …
  
  
• June 2009 New York New Developments
• New Developments Developers of a Jean Nouvel-designed skyscraper adjacent to the Museum of Modern Art have applied to build a tower seven stories taller than the original proposal unveiled two years ago was 75 stories tall. The building has been controversial, with Community Board 5 criticizing its height and bulk in a resolution in March 2008. The mixed-use project from Houston-based international developer Hines Interests will have 100 hotel rooms and 120 condominium units on the upper floors, and also include a 60,000-square-foot expansion of MoMa's galleries on the second to the fifth floors. The amount of space for the …
  
  
• May 2009 New York New Developments
• New Developments Hyatt Hotel & Resorts is opening two new hotels in the next year under its new brand name called Andaz. One hotel is scheduled to open across from Bryant Park on 41st Street and Fifth Avenue next year, and the second, at 75 Wall Street, is to open in September. The 41st Street hotel will offer time-share units on the top floors, and the downtown hotel, converted from the former JP Morgan Chase building, will have 253 rooms, with condo units on the 18th through 42nd floors.Hotel Developer Sam Chang filed plans for a 225-key Hyatt Place hotel …
  
  
• December 2008 New York New Developments
• New DevelopmentsRecently, banks have begun lending to one another, signifying a slight thaw in credit markets. Yet, the commercial real estate market still seems limited in its ability to get financing. This inability to line up financing has scuttled some major building and lease sales in the past few months, one such example is 17 State Street in the Financial District.About 150,000 jobs have been cut at major financial institutions, and more layoffs may be on the way. Some firms may shed an additional 5 percent of jobs this year if the market doesn't turn around. Citibank has cut 22,000 …
  
  
• October 2008 New York New Developments
• New DevelopmentsThe Bush administration proposed granting the Treasury Department the ability to buy up to $700 billion in distressed mortgage-related assets from private firms. The proposal would raise the national debt ceiling to $11.3 trillion. The government also put together a plan that makes investment banks Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley holding companies, giving them access to Federal Reserve Bank of New York funds and putting them under stricter regulations. Boutique firms, like Lazard and Evercore Partners, are seizing clients and staff from fallen rivals. Nationwide, financial companies have announced 103,000 layoffs this year. Democrats proposed taxpayers could receive an …
  
  
• September 2008 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Many more landlords are offering pre-built office and increasing the number of free rent months to attract tenants. Manhattan's vacancy climbed two points to 7.1% percent in the second quarter, compared to last year. Landlords are offering an average of three to six months of free rent, up from two to four months from last year. They are giving tenants $40 to $50 per square foot cash allowances for build outs, up from $30 to $40 from last year. The office leasing market has slowed down, but some big commercial deals are in the works.While some retailers, like Steve & …
  
  
• 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 …