Thor

• December 2024 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings for Sale: Esprit is selling its 900,000-square-foot warehouse at 215 Cole Street in Jersey City. 568 Broadway aka Prince Building’s $200 million loan lands in default, a 12-story office and retail property. 568 Broadway has a high vacancy rate and declining cash flow. Allied Partners and Midtown Equities, are now negotiating with a special servicer for another extension, but foreclosure remains a possibility. Buildings Sold: SL Green sells 11% stake to Japan’s Mori Building Company which values One Vanderbilt at $4.7 billion. SL Green retained a 60% stake in the 1.7 million SF office tower. National Pension Service of …
  
  
• November 2024 New York New Developments
• Major Developments: Fortress won the right to go after Cohen for a $187 million personal guarantee he signed in 2022. When Cohen quit making payments on the $534 million loan earlier this year, Fortress sued, alleging default. They will appeal the decision. First, the parties have to see through the $534 million UCC foreclosure Fortress Fortress pursues largest UCC foreclosure ever on the courthouse steps. Assets tied to a $534 million loan Fortress Investment Group alleges is in default and a $187 million personal guarantee the lender won the right to collect on. Fortress could then, potentially, pursue the claim …
  
  
• September 2024 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings for Sale: A group of Goldman Sachs-led lenders took control of the TSX Broadway project after Fortress Investment Group and L&L; Holding Co., along with others, failed to repay the loan when it came due. The 46-story tower sits at the corner of 47th Street at 1568 Broadway. It includes 75,000 square feet of retail space and a 669-room hotel. There is also a Hilton-branded Tempo hotel and Palace Theatre. The vacant property at 329-343 West 25th Street, which comprises the church and rectory, a school building and convent. The site spans three adjacent parcels with a combined lot …
  
  
• August 2024 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings for Sale: The CMBS loan for 200 million at 500 Fifth Avenue, a 727,757-square-foot office property in Midtown, was moved to special servicing because of imminent maturity default. Meyer Chetrit’s 65 Broadway. The $151 million CMBS loan tied to the FiDi office building had landed in special servicing in February. Cash flow couldn’t cover loan payments, The American Express Building was reappraised at $104 million below the loan balance. Lexin Capital is selling a development site at 75 Nassau Street asking $75 million, either in an outright sale or through the sale of a partial stake. The site is …
  
  
• July 2024 New York New Developments
• Major Developments: The Adams administration’s plan to rezone a 46-block area of the Bronx is moving forward, with a final City Council vote expected this summer. New York City Planning Commission signed off on the plan, which targets the areas surrounding the four new Metro-North Stations planned for Co-op City, Hunts Point, Morris Park and Parkchester/Van Nest. The stations are expected to be built by 2027. The rezoning is expected to pave the way for 7,474 apartments, and add more than 300,000 gross square feet of retail space, 1.6 million square feet of life-science space and 1.2 million square feet …
  
  
• July 2024 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings for Sale: Brookfield hopes to sell 3333 Broadway for $350 million for the 1,193 unit rental complex that has five connected buildings and is one of the biggest apartment complexes in Manhattan. Mitsui Fudosan America is looking to sell its majority stake at 525 West 52nd Street, a 392-unit property. Mitsui and Taconic are seeking a deal that would value the building at $275 million. The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority is looking to sell its New York Edition Hotel at 5 Madison Avenue. The 271-key hotel in the landmarked clock tower overlooking Madison Square Park is asking $271 million. …
  
  
• June 2024 New York New Developments
• Major Developments: New York City’s Conversion Accelerator Program has received interest from 64 office landlords seeking to convert their office properties to housing. Four buildings that have already been converted or begun construction through the accelerator, creating about 2,100 apartments. 650 First Avenue and 980 Sixth Avenue have received permits to begin renovations for reuse. The accelerator, announced in August, assists developers in navigating city laws and bureaucracy to expedite complex conversion projects. Coupled with Mayor Eric Adams’ plan to rezone Midtown, the initiative's aim is to create 20,000 apartments from underutilized office stock over the next decade. City Planning …
  
  
• June 2024 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings for Sale: The Kaufmans are looking to sell a half-empty office building on Third Avenue. The family’s Sage Realty put the 40-story tower at 767 Third Avenue up for sale with Eastdil Secured, which has told potential buyers that the pricing guidance is around $100 million. Aby Rosen’s RFR Holding is trying to unload an office building in Gramercy Park as its lone tenant exits. Anna Delvey need not make an offer. RFR is looking to sell 281 Park Avenue South. It’s unclear how much the company is seeking for the 45,000-square-foot property, though it is willing to either …
  
  
• March 2024 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Office: Office values are down 25% year-over-year through December. With the rise of remote working and other economic conditions, there’s no guarantee those values will ever reach previous levels again. Office owners are showing more willingness to sell properties at a discount. As declining occupancy rates and higher interest rates have driven down values on buildings, some of which were bought at previous market cycle peaks. High interest rates have discouraged dealmakers, while office values have fallen by billions (maybe trillions) of dollars thanks to remote work. Peel back a few layers and things might not be quite so dire, …
  
  
• March 2024 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings for Sale: The real estate arm of insurer MassMutual put the 29-story 100 Wall Street up for sale, eyeing a figure of about $125 million That’s nearly $150 million less than Barings, through its subsidiary Cornerstone Real Estate Advisors, paid for the tower in 2015. Buildings Sold: Jeffrey Wu is selling 41-60 Main Street in Flushing, Queens for $80 million to Madison Realty Capital. The 100,000-square-foot office and retail building is located in Downtown Flushing. An entity connected to the Holiday Inn Club, 501 Lexington Development LLC, paid $30.3 million. Sold by Timeshare Acquisitions At Lexington LLC, purchased the …
  
  
• February 2024 New York New Developments
• Major Developments: LVMH Moët Hennessy Louis Vuitton, the parent company of Louis Vuitton, Christian Dior and jewelry designer Tiffany & Co., is in negotiations to acquire 745 Fifth Avenue, a 35-story tower. LVMH is competing against other bidders for the property. SL Green acquired 2 Herald Square leasehold for next to nothing; it had completed a deal to acquire a 95% stake in the leasehold at 2 Herald Square: SL Green paid $7 million to settle the property’s $182.5 million mortgage. The City Comptroller is suing Lloyd Goldman’s development company over allegations that it failed to pay the wages required …
  
  
• February 2024 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings for Sale: The defaulted loan on Blackstone's 1740 Broadway is for sale after a $430 million drop in value. The $308 million CMBS loan on 1740 Broadway is on the market for roughly $150 million. Albert Kalimian’s firm put the property at 200 West 67th Street up for sale. Kalimian had defaulted on the $194 million mortgage which matured in November. The 310-unit luxury property rental income covered 87% of borrowing costs. Rialto Capital is suing Metropole on behalf of the lenders for failing to make $215 million CMBS loan payments on 681 Fifth Avenue, a 12-story building since …
  
  
• January 2024 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Office: Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison leased 765,000 sf at 1345 Sixth Avenue for 20-years. WeWork and the landlord agreed to modify its lease for a shorter term at a lower rent to keep its 300,000 SF lease at 1440 Broadway. HPS Investment Partners’ signed a renewal and expansion for 159,000 SF at 40 W. 57th Street. Verizon recently listed 143,000 square feet for sublease at 155 Delancey Street. Ralph Lauren signed an 11-year renewal for 133,000 SF headquarters at 650 Madison Avenue, shrinking its footprint by 39%. Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan signed a 132,000 SF lease at …
  
  
• 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 Buildings For Sale
• Buildings for Sale: CIM Group will hand the keys to 1440 Broadway back to its lender. It saw the $399 million loan backed by the Midtown building go to special servicing this month. Buildings Sold: Extell sold 1710 Broadway for $173 million. In 2017, Extell paid $268 million for it. Extell is working to get plans approved for a 54-story, 673-unit hotel to replace the six-story. Sherwood sells Times Square hotel for $165 million. Apollo Global Management and Newbond Holdings are buying the 317-key hotel at 2 Times Square. The 200,000-square-foot hotel has 317 rooms. The transaction would break down …
  
  
• September 2023 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings for Sale: Vornado weighs sale of Farley building in quest for liquidity. The Farley Building which Vornado and Related Cos redeveloped from a former U.S. Post Office was leased to Meta Platforms, Facebook's parent company, in 2020 in a 730,000 SF, 15-year deal that was a bright light for the market during the worst of the pandemic. The Metropolitan College of New York is looking to sell two of its floors at an office building at 60 West Street. Metropolitan College has struggled since the pandemic, feeling a sizable drop in enrollment. Buildings Sold: Capital One is selling a …
  
  
• 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. …
  
  
• July 2023 New York New Developments
• Major Developments: NYC office struggles no threat to tax revenue: Worst-case 40% value decline would decrease revenue up to 1.4% by 2027 The city would face a revenue shortfall of $323 million in fiscal year 2025 (which starts on July 1, 2024) if the value of office properties declines 40% from 2023 to 2029. By the time fiscal year 2027 rolls around, that shortfall would be projected to jump to $1.1 billion. That figure represents only 3% of the city’s property tax levy and 1.4% of its tax revenues. The city’s tax revenues may be slightly worse condition than suggested. …
  
  
• 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 …
  
  
• June 2023 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings for Sale: Premier Equities bought the hotel at 1141 Broadway in 2019, and is seeking around $60 million for the 10-story NoMad property. Three Nolita Veracity Equities are slated for a foreclosure auction as the firm struggles to repay a $41 million loan. 31 Prince Street, 46 Spring Street and 48 Spring Street are now more than 121 days delinquent. Appraised value has dropped from $66 million when the loan was issued in March 2018 to $49.5 million. All the properties are walk ups and have a combined 48 residential units, only six of which are rent-regulated and eight …
  
  
• May 2023 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings for Sale: Flatiron Building auction set for May 23. The winning bidder will have to produce a $100K check. 300 Park Avenue, Tishman Speyer’s $485 million loan is in a special servicer after the landlord opted to get ahead of an upcoming maturity. The loan on the 770K SF, 25-story building, which was issued in 2013 by German American Capital Corp., is coming due in August. L&L; Holding and its partner are in default on the $92.5 million loan backing the office portion of the 68-story, mixed-use tower at 142 West 57th Street. The $50 million mezzanine B note, …
  
  
• April 2023 New York New Developments
• Major Developments: Gov. Kathy Hochul dismissed doubts around Penn Station’s redevelopment and expansion, as the plan appears to be in trouble. The development is expected to yield 18 million square feet of commercial space and around 1,200 apartments. Vornado controls five of the eight development sites. State authorities approved a plan to partially pay for the redevelopment of the transit station, estimating that payments in lieu of taxes from private development could generate up to $3.75 billion for the project. The donut and coffee chain last year led the city in ubiquity again with 620 storefronts, five more than the …
  
  
• April 2023 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings for Sale: 115 Seventh Avenue could sell for half the amount when Argentic Investment Management took control of the seven-story building at Seventh Avenue and 17th Street, hoping to get around $30 million. Gregg Singer is fighting Madison Realty Capital’s attempt to foreclose on the old P.S. 64 site and put the entity into bankruptcy protection a day before a foreclosure auction. Giving Singer one last shot at selling the property or refinancing the debt on it. JDS Development and the retail piece of 9 DeKalb Ave will hold onto condos. JDS Development has listed the 398-unit rental apartments …
  
  
• March 2023 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings for Sale: Related Companies’ fund management arm and BentallGreenOak are ready to walk away from the Point LIC, a small campus of converted warehouses in Long Island City, that sit mostly vacant after six years. BrightSpire Capital is looking to sell the non-performing loans, and the borrowers have agreed to hand the keys to the Point over to whoever buys the debt through a deed-in-lieu of foreclosure. The mortgages on the two buildings total around $150 million. The two properties: a 130,000-square-foot former oil storage warehouse at 2100 49th Avenue, dubbed the Paragon Building, and a 220,000-square-foot building across …
  
  
• 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 …
  
  
• February 2023 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings for Sale: Chetrit to pay off the floating-rate loan $481 million. The Chetrit Group is facing default on a $481 million loan, covering 43 properties that the developer is now looking to sell. APF Properties is looking to sell its plot at 24 West 57th Street, for north of $80 million. As a development site, the property holds about 140,000 square feet of buildable space as of right. Maverick sues Chetrit over unfinished Penn Station hotel. Lender alleged the developer neglected matured loans, didn’t complete the project. Maverick Real Estate Partners sued for the second time going after the …
  
  
• 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 Buildings For Sale
• Buildings for Sale: Stefan Soloviev is negotiating to sell 9 West 57th Street and is finalizing an agreement to sell the prestigious office tower. The 50-story, 1.6 million-square-foot building, was last appraised in July 2016 at $3.4 billion, or over $2,000 per square foot. LoanCore Capital filed a lawsuit against a joint ownership venture at 111 East 59th Street, which includes Dune Real Estate Partners and Puma Construction Corporation. The lender alleged the owners defaulted on $193.4 million in loans and is calling for the forced sale of the retail and office property. Proceeds from a forced sale would go …
  
  
• August 2022 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings for Sale: Steve Witkoff and Ian Schrager have defaulted on their Public Hotel on the Lower East Side. The developers defaulted on their $189 million mortgage backing the 367-room hotel at 215 Chrystie Street, and are now paying a 9% penalty interest rate. Their lender, Deutsche Bank, is looking to sell the non-performing loan. Aby Rosen has put the Church Missions House for sale at $135 million, or about $3,000 per square foot. It is a six-story, 45,000-square-foot office property located at 281 Park Avenue South. Thor Equities is still trying to sell a Lenox Hill townhouse after 10 …
  
  
• July 2022 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings for Sale: Industrial real estate investment volume rose by 31% year-over-year to $1.8 billion. This followed a record-setting fourth quarter of 2021, during which investment volume doubled year-over-year to $5.2 billion and nearly a third of the year’s transactions were completed. The tri-state area had a record $10.6 billion in industrial real estate deals last year, a 64% increase from the previous year. New York City had almost $3.6 billion in industrial real estate investment volume last year, with Queens experiencing a nearly 50% year-over-year increase to nearly $1.5 billion. RXR and the Blackstone Group are marketing 1330 Sixth …
  
  
• 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 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: …
  
  
• March 2022 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Office: Tech companies leased 76% more space year-over-year in the last three quarters of 2021. Santander Bank is relocating its headquarters to WeWork and subletting 160,000 square feet at 437 Madison Avenue. Hermès inked a lease at 550 Madison Avenue. The brand signed a three-floor, 71,757-square-foot lease relocating from 55 East 59th Street. Mutual of America Financial Group signed a lease for 252,000 square feet it already occupies. A year before the company brought in a joint venture partner to co-own the 766,000-square-foot property. First Service Residential took 48,000 square feet at the Midtown building across the ninth and 10th …
  
  
• March 2022 New York Buildings For Sale
• For Sale: GFP Real Estate is looking to sell an industrial property (Bushwick Place) on the border of East Williamsburg and Bushwick for $30 million. The decision was made after a noodle manufacturer renewed its lease for the 71,500-square foot Brooklyn building for 10 years. Properties Sold: An institutional owner sold 375 West Broadway for $130 million. The building houses a 10,000-square-foot Gucci store on the ground floor beneath 60,000 square feet of office space. Oaktree Capital Management sold a condominium building at 90 Greene Street for $39.4 million to Acadia Realty Trust. The building contains 11,200-square-foot with four full-floor …
  
  
• February 2022 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings for Sale: 24-09 Jackson Avenue in Long Island City, Queens, a long-stalled hotel development site in Long Island City, is up for sale. Toyoko Inn is aiming to get around $60 million for its property at 24-09 Jackson Avenue in the Court Square section of the Queens neighborhood. Watermark Capital is exploring a sale of the 226-key hotel at 125 West 26th Street, between Sixth and Seventh avenues. The investment firm has owned the building since 2013, when it purchased it from Magna Hospitality for $113 million. Oceanwide Holdings defaulted on its $175 million loan against 80 South Street, …
  
  
• 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 …
  
  
• December 2021 New York New Developments
• Major Developments Biden signed into law a bipartisan $1 trillion bill aimed at rebuilding the country’s aging infrastructure. Funding will be available for the extension of the Second Avenue subway line, the revitalization of the Port Authority bus terminal, upgrading the subway’s signals and improving trip times, and bridge and road upgrades for Long Island and Westchester. Amtrak’s high-speed rail proposals for the Northeast corridor are slated to receive more than $6.5 billion for capital renewal backlog projects, as well as $3.6 billion for intercity passenger rail grants. JFK International Airport could get $295 million and LaGuardia Airport $150 million …
  
  
• December 2021 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings for Sale: 740 West End Avenue, a 14-story, 135,000-square-foot, pre-war apartment building, is owned by Wolk Properties. The property has six commercial units and 95 residential units, 57 of which are rent-stabilized, averaging approximately 1,000 square feet. Madison Capital and Lubert-Adler Partners are looking to sell the leasehold interest on 71 Fifth Avenue. The property could fetch as much as $150 million. 8 Spruce Street, a 76-story highrise, are seeking north of $850 million. Brookfield Property Partners and Nuveen. 5 East 59th Street, a nine-story, mixed-use building, is facing foreclosure by a Singaporean investment bank. PWM Property Management filed …
  
  
• 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 …
  
  
• October 2021 New York New Developments
• New Developments 2 World Trade Center is looking for an anchor tenant, which would be required for a construction loan. Norman Foster of Foster + Partners would serve as the architect on the project. Landlords are ready to fight over whether the city should regulate retail and office rents. The City Council’s Committee on Small Business is planning a hearing on a bill to create a rent guidelines board that would limit rent increases on small commercial spaces. The board would have jurisdiction over small retail and office spaces, up to 10,000 square feet, as well as manufacturing establishments up …
  
  
• October 2021 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings for Sale: The retail condo at 808 Broadway and 104-110 Fourth Avenue is for sale, asking $15.95 million. Halloween Adventure has been operating from the building since 1996, but the store will close up shop after the sale. Three retail condominiums at 385 First Avenue are up for sale for $29 million. Rialto Capital is foreclosing on 33 West 46th Street, a 10-story office and retail building in the Diamond District. The property belongs to the estate of Jorge Justo Neuss, an Argentinian businessman who authorities said killed his wife and then himself late last year. Buildings Sold: Google …
  
  
• September 2021 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Retail: In January 2020, Fendi and Berluti inked leases at 595 Madison Avenue after Coach left. Hermes, Giorgio Armani and Brunello Cucinelli are also planting a flag in or increasing their footprints in the area. Toys ‘R’ Us is planning a large-scale comeback with the help of retailer Macy’s. Toys ‘R’ Us is set to bring more than 400 shops within Macy’s department stores, across the country, starting next year. Madison Avenue retail from 57th Street to 72nd Street is only seeing 71% of its 2019-foot traffic. Upper Fifth Avenue is at 92% of its 2019 levels. Soho foot traffic …
  
  
• September 2021 New York New Developments
• New Developments New York City has a 10.5% unemployment rate, almost twice the national average. The city has lost around 500,000 jobs since the start of the pandemic that have yet to be replaced. Mayor Bill de Blasio announced that the vaccine mandate would begin on August 17 and require many indoor businesses to check for proof of vaccination before allowing patrons to enter. At that point, penalties for compliance failure will begin at $1,000 and can rise to $5,000 for repeat offenders. 63% of the city’s population is at least partially vaccinated, with 56% of the population fully vaccinated. …
  
  
• August 2021 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings for Sale: A vacant Lower East Side lot is on the market for $2.49 million. The lot allows for the building of either 4,271 square feet or parking for six cars. Buildings Sold: Andrew Farkas purchased the Lexington Hotel for $185 million. The Midtown hotel had sold for $333.7 million a decade ago. It is set to reopen next month. The seller was DiamondRock Hospitality. SL Green acquired the fee interest in 461 Fifth Avenue, a 200,000-square-foot office building in Midtown South for $28.3 million. The seller, an affiliate of Karp Family Associates, was Lane Owner LLC. SL Green …
  
  
• 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 …
  
  
• 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 …
  
  
• March 2021 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings Sold: SL Green Realty is unloading its stake in Midtown’s Tower 46. The real estate investment trust is in contract to sell its 25% interest in the commercial condominium units at 55 West 46th Street to a Brookfield Asset Management real estate fund for a gross valuation of $275 million, or $793 per square foot. DivcoWest is going to buy a Hudson Square building and has an exclusive agreement to buy Jamestown Properties’ 325 Hudson Street. Pricing for the 10-story, 225,000-square-foot building is north of $150 million. CBS Broadcasting, an entity owned by ViacomCBS, bought a site at 500 …
  
  
• 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 …
  
  
• December 2020 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings For Sale: Thor Equities has missed two months of payments on a loan tied to the Charles Scribner’s Sons Building in Midtown. Thor is now 60 days delinquent on a $105 million loan at 597 Fifth Avenue. The owner of a five-story commercial building in Tribeca has filed for bankruptcy, facing foreclosure and $23 million in debt. CTW Realty owns the 18,300-square-foot building at 381 Broadway through an entity, 381 Broadway Realty, which filed for Chapter 11 protection. Their lenders have been trying for more than two years to foreclose on the property for default, but can’t proceed now …
  
  
• November 2020 New York New Developments
• New York New Developments Tourism in NYC has fallen by 80% and nearly 9 in 10 office employees are still working remotely. The New York City Employees’ Retirement System ramped up its exposure only to see it underperform the stock market by $260 million and rack up at least $110 million in fees between 2016 and 2019. The pandemic has shaved $16 billion off projected construction spending in 2020 and 2021. The New York Building Congress estimates spending will reach $55.5 billion this year, down from the $65.9 billion previously forecasted. Next year, spending will be just about flat at …
  
  
• 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 New Developments
• New York New Developments 476 new building permits were filed in the three-month period from April through June, spanning 9,309 multi-family units. Nearly half of the footage is residential, just over one-third is commercial, and the rest is split between education and utilities. Amazon said it would increase its fulfillment center square footage by 50% in 2020, that is on top of the 15% increase it reported in 2019. NYC Health + Hospitals’ six administrative offices were consolidated at 50 Water Street and resulted in $200 million in cost savings . HHC signed a 25-year lease for 526,552 square feet. …
  
  
• August 2020 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings For Sale: 22 West 35th Street, a 4,340 RSF building asking $22,800,000 209 West 20th Street is a 12 story free market apartment building asking $9,500,000 152 West 24th Street is a 2,468 RSF building asking $6,800,000 57 West 38th Street is a retail condo 9,500 SF on ground floor and basement asking $12,500,000 10 West 46th Street is a commercial condo 4,915 SF asking $5,200,000 91 East Broadway Hotel for sale 15,113 SF asking $20,000,000 420 Fifth Avenue commercial condo 18,003 RSF asking $21,500,000 62 Mulberry Street, a 44,160 RSF parking garage for sale asking $18,500,000 Buildings Sold: …
  
  
• July 2020 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings For Sale: Residential Cooperatives / Condominiums In the past few years, developers have rushed to build scores of glitzy new projects, flooding the market and spoiling buyers for choice. There are now more than 15,000 unsold condos in the city. Of that 15,000 more than 15% or around 2,600 units is in just six buildings. Lenders are largely working with the building owners to give them time for the market to stabilize. Some of the inventory will be repositioned. In New York City, some developers are hoping to clear a glut of unsold units by offering bulk deals at …
  
  
• June 2020 New York New Developments
• New York New Developments Mayor Bill de Blasio signed into law a package of Covid-19 relief bills, including one that temporarily bars landlords from going after restaurants and store owners’ personal assets. Attempting to enforce such provisions constitutes harassment under the measure. New York state’s coronavirus foreclosure ban does not apply to mezzanine loans. The last observation deck at the Chrysler Building closed in 1945 and will now be getting a new one. RFR Realty received unanimous approval from the Landmarks Preservation Commission for the new deck on the terraces that frame the 61st floor of the 77-floor tower. They …
  
  
• May 2020 New York New Developments
• New York New Developments The number of new building filings in January and February dropped 28% and 23%, respectively, from a year ago. RFR Realty abandoned a deal to buy 900 Third Avenue for $400 million and a retail condo at 1600 Broadway in Times Square for more than $200 million. Extell’s controversial East Harlem development site is destined to become a low-rise office building. The developer began his assemblage in 2014 by purchasing the East 124th Street parcel for $39 million. The Empire State Development agency said real estate services must be conducted remotely for all transactions, “including but …
  
  
• 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 …
  
  
• 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 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 …
  
  
• December 2019 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings For Sale: The M&M;’s store in Times Square is up for sale with an asking price of $200 million. Sherwood Equities put its 27,000-square-foot retail condo at the base of 1600 Broadway on the market. Buildings Sold: Shimizu Realty Development acquired the Albano building located at 305 East 46th street for $152 million. The seller was the Vanbarton Group. Vanbarton had owned the 16-story building since 2018, when the firm acquired it for $117 million. Unizo Holdings sold 685 Third Avenue to BentallGreenOak in the mid $400 million range. Abu Dhabi Investment Authority is selling its 40-story office building …
  
  
• 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. …
  
  
• November 2019 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings For Sale: JPMorgan may sell 383 Madison Avenue. The consideration comes as the financial company weighs moving thousands of jobs outside of the New York area in an effort to lower costs ahead of a possible financial slowdown. Buildings Sold: Jeon America Inc. bought a five-story office building at 42 West 28th Street for $10.5 million from Uk Choi’s Legend Corp. The property is about 42,000 square feet. Savanna has gone into contract to sell 2417 Third Avenue the Bruckner building for $65 million to ZG Capital Partners. The deal works out to about $369 per square foot and …
  
  
• October 2019 New York New Developments
• Major Developments: WeWork is pulled its public offering. Neumann’s was removed as CEO from Wework. The reported value plummeted at least two-thirds from its once $47 billion. 20 people aligned with the former CEO Adam Neumann are leaving the company.WeWork’s parent company bought 14 venture-backed startups since 2014. The We Company is now trying to shed some of those acquisitions, many of which were purchased with stocks leaving some investors feeling stuck. Banks seek to revise Adam Neumann’s $500 million credit line. Following a cool reception from investors over his company’s valuation, lenders are looking to revise the terms of …
  
  
• 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 …
  
  
• 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 …
  
  
• June 2019 New York New Developments
• Major Developments: The City Council approved the new headquarters for JPMorgan, the first project to take advantage of New York’s Midtown East rezoning. JPMorgan will stay and rebuild its global headquarters at 1,400 feet and 70 stories tall, and will allow the company to consolidate employees who now work out of multiple different locations. The Port Authority of New York and New Jersey is moving ahead with plans to replace the bus terminal. The agency is moving forward with the formal environmental review process and released a document for public review. Blumenfeld Development Group has received a $235 million refinancing …
  
  
• June 2019 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings Sold: RFR Realty sold 345 Park Avenue South to Deerfield, a medical fund manager that oversees $8 billion in assets, who secured a five-year $525 million loan for the acquisition and a conversion of the building to a medical lab. The sale price for the 12 story building was not disclosed. Alduwaliya Asset Management is acquiring the 17-story, 142 West 36th Street and 10-story, 234 West 39th Street for $140 million. The buildings span 119,203 square feet and 91,943 square feet respectively, were sold by Tod Waterman and USAA, who paid $118 million for the properties in 2015. RXR’s …
  
  
• 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 …
  
  
• May 2019 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings For Sale: Marymount School of New York has listed its five-story, 12,300-square-foot townhouse at 2 East 82nd Street between Fifth and Madison avenues for $32 million. JPMorgan is looking to sell 195 Broadway for $800 million. The bank’s asset management arm owns a 95% stake in the 1.1 million-square-foot building through a partnership with L&L; Holding and Beacon Capital. JPMorgan Asset Management is considering bids ranging from a 49% stake to a sale of full ownership. If 195 Broadway sold for $800 million, the asset manager would be realizing roughly $730 a square foot. Buildings Sold: Savanna has a …
  
  
• March 2019 New York New Developments
• New York Major Developments Amazon has decided against coming to New York City. The company won’t build a new campus in Queens. Amazon was reconsidering its selection of New York, amid fierce political opposition. Much of the blowback sprung from the $3 billion state and city incentive offered to the company to come to the city. The company also indicated that it isn’t planning to reboot a search for another location, instead will focus on its new headquarters. The gallery space at Sotheby’s auction house is being upgraded and expanded at their headquarters on 1334 York Avenue for $55 million. …
  
  
• 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 …
  
  
• January 2019 New York Buildings For Sale
• New York Buildings for Sale: Coca-Cola is looking to sell its building on Fifth Avenue. The soft drink maker has put the 18-story, 354,000-square-foot building it owns at the corner of 55th Street on the market. Coca-Cola, which inherited the building at 711 Fifth Avenue in 1983 with its purchase of Columbia Pictures “has determined that it does not need to retain its investment in the building to support its activities in New York. New York Buildings Sold: SJP Properties and longtime partner Prudential Financial bought the Midtown South office building at 470 Park Avenue South for $245 million. The …
  
  
• December 2018 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings For Sale: DNA Development is looking to sell 12 West 48th Street and wants to double what it paid in 2016. The building is a four-story, 31,000-square-foot property. DNA purchased it in 2016 from Extell Development for $37 million. The property was a parking garage. The garage was demolished and DNA is in the process of replacing it with a retail building with a glass facade. The project should be finished next year with around 11,000-square-foot on the ground floor and a basement storefront. Bank of America will aid Anbang Insurance Group to sell its $5.5 billion portfolio of …
  
  
• 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 …
  
  
• November 2018 New York Buildings For Sale
• NYC Buildings For Sale: Barnett’s Extell Development put the 600-unit building at 555 10th Avenue on the market with an asking price of $775 million. The owners of 417 Park Avenue are making another push to co-op the apartment building. 417 Park is a 13-story building that has fielded interest from a number of buyers in recent years, including a $250 million offer from Kushner Companies. Trinity Real Estate is looking to ground lease one of its Hudson Square development sites in a deal that could be worth $180 million or more. Trinity Church put the development site at the …
  
  
• 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 …
  
  
• 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 …
  
  
• April 2018 New York Buildings For Sale
• New York Buildings for sale: Two sites in Staten Island spanning roughly 1.1 million square feet were hitting the market with an asking price of $23 million. The two parcels at 4482 Arthur Kill Road and 742 Sharrotts Road span 24.5 acres. The owner of sports apparel chain Modell’s is in talks to sell its Bronx warehouse for more than $100 million. The chain uses the nearly 300,000-square-foot warehouse on Marconi Street for storage and distribution. Modell’s is close to selling the two-story building, which sits on a 12-acre lot. Magnum Real Estate Group’s Ben Shaoul is in contract to …
  
  
• March 2018 New York New Developments
• New York Major Developments: The city is moving forward with plans to make way for 4.5 million square feet of development on Governors Island. The Trust for Governors Island held its first meeting to discuss rezoning part of the island for commercial real estate development. Beauty chain L’Occitane en Provence is relocating its Fifth Avenue store of 3,378-square-foot lease at 555 Fifth Avenue. The building had an asking retail rent of $1,100 per square foot. L’Occitane’s lease is expiring nearby at 610 Fifth Avenue. Facing high costs and lower than expected profits, retailers on some of Manhattan’s most expensive thoroughfares …
  
  
• 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 …
  
  
• 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 …
  
  
• January 2018 New York Buildings For Sale
• New York Buildings For Sale: Chinese developer is looking to sell the 50-story, 492-key Holiday Inn Manhattan-Financial District. There is no official asking price for the hotel, which opened in 2014, but assumed to be north of $300 million for the property. RFR Realty has given up on developing condominiums at 67 Vestry Street, opting to sell the site to Elliott Aronson’s Iliad Realty Group for $55.5 million. New York Buildings Sold: Sunny K Realty paid $13.5 million for an 18-unit mixed-use building at 18 East 23rd Street. The Gramercy Park property includes 16 apartments and two commercial units, and …
  
  
• 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 …
  
  
• September 2017 New York Buildings For Sale
• New York Buildings For Sale: Thor Equities has put the two-story, 50,000-square-foot retail condominium at 88 Greenwich Street, that is home to the 9/11 Tribute Center up for sale for $52 million. New York REIT is marketing 1440 Broadway, a 749,000-square-foot building. The real estate investment trust, which is in the process of selling its 4.4 million-square-foot portfolio as part of the comp. The Broadway property is expected to get $775 per square foot or $580 million. NYRT purchased the building in 2013 from Rockpoint Group and Monday Properties, paying $530 million. The majority owner of the Plaza Hotel is …
  
  
• 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 Buildings For Sale
• New York Buildings For Sale: Centurion Realty is negotiating a plan with its partners to sell the boutique hotel Gansevoort Park Avenue NYC in NoMad at 420 Park Avenue South. New York Buildings Sold: The Kabbalah Centre International is in contract to acquire the Fine Arts Building in Midtown from a group of Greek hedge funders for about $60 million, or $1,000 per square foot. It is a seven-story, 58,000-square-foot property located at 232 East 59th Street. Thor Equities sold its Upper East Side commercial townhouse for $32 million. The 26-room at 36 East 61st Street sold at a 13% …
  
  
• 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 …
  
  
• July 2017 New York Buildings For Sale
• New York Buildings Sold A two-story commercial building at the corner of East 149th Street and Cortland Avenue sold to Albert Babayev for $17.5 million. The 33,135-square-foot building at 356 West 149th Street is leased to a Rite Aid and located a block away from the Third Avenue and East 149th Street hub. New Empire Real Estate sold off a Hell’s Kitchen development site for $15 million to the Coram Deo Church. Zhao bought the vacant lot at 409 West 45th Street in 2014 for $5.3 million, and plans to build a seven-story boutique condominium building on the site. The …
  
  
• 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 …
  
  
• 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 …
  
  
• April 2017 New York New Developments
• New York Major Developments New York comes in as the 6th most expensive office market in the world. Two major developments are in the Gansevoort Market Historic District and are moving ahead. Restoration Hardware’s proposed development at 55 Gansevoort Street was approved. The project will bring a 14-room guesthouse. Restoration Hardware agreed to lower the height of a rooftop and to hide a planned windscreen behind a fiberglass cornice. Nearby, developers are working on turning five buildings between Washington Street and Ninth Avenue into an 111,000-square-foot commercial development. The interim head of the Metropolitan Museum of Art wants to slow …
  
  
• April 2017 New York Buildings For Sale
• New York Buildings For Sale: Ashkenazy Acquisition Corporation and DekaBank are looking to sell a newly redeveloped retail space at the base of 522 Fifth Avenue. The owners finished a $16 million renovation of the two vacant retail condominiums at the base of the 23-story, 380,000-square-foot office condo building. The two-floor retail condos together have 27,310 square feet, with about 10,850 square feet on the ground floor. The retail was valued at $277 million last year, when General Growth Properties sold its 10% stake to an unidentified investor. Ashkenazy, Germany-based DekaBank and Chicago-based real estate investment trust GGP jointly acquired …
  
  
• March 2017 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Manhattan Office: Manhattan’s office-leasing market started strong with tenants signing 4.5 million square feet of leases in January, an increase around 70% from last year. Sixth Avenue had four of the top five deals in January. Manhattan absorption was positive at 440,000 square feet. The market’s average asking rent climbed to $73.40 per square foot. Manhattan ended 2016 with more than 33 million square feet of leasing activity, a 5.5% increase over 2015 but absorption turned negative for the first time since 2009, as activity failed to keep up with additional new supply. Office landlords are going to have a …
  
  
• 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 …
  
  
• 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 …
  
  
• October 2016 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings For Sale Ashkenazy Acquisitions and Deka Immobilien put the New York Marriott East Side hotel on the market 17 months after buying it. The sellers are unlikely to get more than the $270 million they paid for the 525 Lexington Avenue property in 2015. The landmarked building spans 319,319 square feet and includes 655 hotel rooms and the 525LEX restaurant. Jona Rechnitz, the developer at the forefront of a probe into corruption at the New York Police Department, is looking to sell a Midtown development site for $26 million. JSR Capital bought the property at 238 Madison Avenue in …
  
  
• 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 …
  
  
• August 2016 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings For Sale: The Blackstone Group is shopping its 665,000-square-foot office tower at 1065 Sixth Avenue and hopes to get as much as $700 million. ABC Carpet & Home is shopping around its property at 880-888 Broadway, an office-and-retail condominium that could get upwards of $200 million, or over $2,600 per square foot. ABC has owned and fully occupied the six-story, 76,400-square-foot building since 1981. The property has a 20,600-square-foot retail condo and a 55,800-square-foot condo for office and manufacturing space. It is still not clear if ABC Carpet would vacate upon selling the building or make a sale-leaseback agreement. …
  
  
• 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 …
  
  
• 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 …
  
  
• June 2016: New York Buildings For Sale
• New York Buildings sold RXR Realty">RXR Realty was near a $1.7 billion deal to acquire the 42-story office tower at 1285 Sixth Avenue and has finally closed, marking one of the city's biggest commercial transactions of the year. RXR financed the purchase with $1.2 billion in loans. AXA Financial, formerly owned both buildings, with 1285 Sixth Avenue owned through a joint venture between AXA and JPMorgan Asset Management. AXA put the adjacent properties up for sale last summer and was looking for as much as $4 billion for the two buildings combined. Caerus Group closed on its $38.2 million purchase …
  
  
• 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 New Developments
• New Developments General Growth Properties and Thor Equities' are planning to add five new floors of office space at 685 Fifth Avenue. The developers are planning to redistribute space from the lower floors to create five new floors of office space that will be added to the 20-story building, raising its height from 227 feet to 292 feet.Isaac Chetrit">Isaac Chetrit and Ray Yadidi are planning a mixed-use skyscraper of up to 80 stories in a block-long assemblage on Sixth Avenue between West 36th and 37th streets, consisting of two existing buildings and 235,000 square feet of adjacent air rights. They …
  
  
• May 2016: New York Buildings For Sale
• New York Buildings sold Sierra Assets Group bought at 160 East 56th Street a Midtown office building for $18.7 million. The building has 42 units which are mostly office tenants with some retail and contain 51,900 square feet. David Associates, sued three of the property's managing members in October to fairly partition the proceeds from the sale, citing constant friction between the owners. The owners countersued, claiming they were owed income from the property that was never distributed.The Renatus Group bought two contiguous mixed-use buildings at 152-154 7th Avenue for $10.5 million from Michael Connolly. One of the building's three …
  
  
• 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 Buildings For Sale
• New York Buildings sold Jeff Sutton">Jeff Sutton purchased a four-story, mixed-use building along Bleecker Street in the West Village for $11 million, or $2,434 per square foot from Mark Perlgut. The 4,159-square-foot building at 275 Bleecker Street is home to David's Tea on the ground floor, and four apartments on the upper floors.Mack-Cali Realty Corp. is in contract to sell its interest in 125 Broad Street in the Financial District for $202 million. Recently, Mack- Cali Realty was looking to sell its commercial condominium at the 40-story, 1.3 million-square-foot tower. Mack-Cali bought the 525,000-square-foot condo, spanning the second through 16th …
  
  
• March 2016: New York Buildings For Sale
• New York Buildings sold Gary Barnett's Extell Development made another deal with the Duell family, buying four adjacent commercial buildings on Sixth Avenue in the Flatiron District for a combined $50 million. The buildings collectively have about 63,500 buildable square feet. At 116 Seventh Avenue and 204 117th Street for $11 million. Extell also bought 502 Third Avenue, a rental property with ground-floor retail, from the family for another $11 million around the same time.Extell Development is in talks to buy a Greenwich Village commercial property with substantial development rights from the Duell family. 530 Sixth Avenue is an existing …
  
  
• 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 …
  
  
• 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 Buildings For Sale
• New York Buildings sold Condo developer Six Sigma is in contract to buy a six-story self-storage facility near the northern end of the High Line in Chelsea for $54 million at 517-523 West 29th Street. The seller is self-storage Nicholas Sprayregen. The six-story, 55,000-square-foot, warehouse is one of 14 facilities in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx. The site is zoned for up to 74,000 buildable square feet. Vornado Realty Trust purchased 265 West 34th Street for $28.5 million. Vornado acquired the property from a group led by Manhattan attorney William Silverman. The deal gives the company three contiguous properties …
  
  
• 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 …
  
  
• May 2015: New York New Developments
• New Developments China's largest publicly-traded developer is buying a majority stake in at 130 West 42nd Street, a 30-story office building for $125 million. Real estate funds are receiving more investment from pension funds, endowments and institutional investors. Madison Capital is buying a retail space encompassing at least 32,000 square feet at 549-555 and 557-559 Broadway in Soho for $400 million. Asking rent for the new ground-floor retail space will likely exceed $1,000 per square foot. Scholastic paid $25.5 million for the 10-story property at 557-559 Broadway in 2010, and $255 million for the 12-story property at 549-555 Broadway last …
  
  
• May 2015: New York Buildings For Sale
• New York Buildings sold Eliot Spitzer's sale of the Crown Building for $1.78 billion to Jeff Sutton and General Growth Properties set an all-time price per-square-foot record. The deal, which closed last month, marks the highest price paid per square foot ever paid for an entire office building. At 390,000 square feet, the price breaks down to $4,564 per square foot.Extell Development and the Group.">Carlyle Group sold a portion of their Riverside Center project on the Far West Side for $410.8 million to James Linsley's GID Development Group. GID purchased 40 Riverside Boulevard, one of five buildings in the 8-acre …
  
  
• 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 …
  
  
• April 2015: New York Buildings For Sale
• New York Buildings sold Chinese insurance company Groups bought the Waldorf Astoria for nearly $2 billion. It was the largest ever Chinese investment in a single Manhattan property and that was negotiated chairman Wu Xiaohui to chairman Jonathan Gray head of real estate for Blackstone.Maddd Equities bought the school component of a 14-story Upper East Side building for $24.5 million. The school is located inside a 181,700-square-foot building at 1225-1239 Second Avenue, located between East 64th and 65th streets. The Grace Institute had owned the roughly 45,200-square-foot space since 1963.David Berley purchased 160-162 Lexington for $24.5 million from Lexington Landmark …
  
  
• 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. …
  
  
• 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 …
  
  
• January 2015: New York Buildings For Sale
• New York Buildings sold Jeff Sutton and General Growth Properties are buying the Crown Building at Fifth Avenue and 57th Street for $1.75 billion. The price works out to $4,490 per square foot, which sets a new world record for the price of an entire office building. The nearly 400,000-square-foot tower includes roughly 50,000 square feet of valuable retail space with retail tenants including: Bulgari , Mikimoto, Bank of America and Piaget. Broad Street Development purchased two Noho apartment buildings for a combined $178.5 million. The properties are located at 298 and 304 Mulberry Street. The buildings house 182 apartments, …
  
  
• 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 Buildings purchased & For to purchase
• New York Buildings sold The developer who is turning Verizon's former downtown headquarters into luxury condominiums has bought the building's 40,000-square-foot retail space for $40 million.A Developer acquired a three-story Upper West Side commercial building located at 2307 Broadway for $25.9 million. The 9,900-square-foot property, between West 83rd and 84th streets, is home to a Duane Reade store on the ground floor. There are offices on the upper floors.A Financial services firm acquired a 16-story office building at 21 Penn Plaza in Midtown from Savanna and the Feil Organization for an undisclosed price.A Canadian property investor and Chicago-based Callahan Capital …
  
  
• November 2014 NYC Buildings purchased & For to purchase
• New York Buildings sold Two properties in Midtown East were just sold for $18 million. A five-building development site at 134-142 Bowery sold for $45.3 million.A Midtown East-based real estate investment firm bought 66 Pearl Street for $30.1 million.Emmes Asset Management is selling a Midtown South office building at 158 West 27th Street for a sizable profit. The 118,000-square-foot building is in contract for $82.5 million.New York University bought a 151,000-square-foot building in Noho for $157 million, with plans to convert it into a temporary space for athletic facilities.Ashkenazy Acquisition Corporation bought a pair of adjacent retail buildings a block …
  
  
• 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 …
  
  
• August 2014:NYC New Developments
• New Developments The large retirement investment firm is the buyer in a $365 million deal to acquire the leased fee interest in 2 Herald Square.Wharton Properties received a $95 million construction loan to develop a six-story, 33,000-square-foot Harlem retail building to be anchored by Whole Foods. Natixis Real Estate Capital provided a three-year, interest-only loan that comes with two options to extend it for a 12-month period. The site at 100 West 125th Street, near Lenox Avenue, will hold Whole Foods as well as Olive Garden, TD Bank, Burlington Coat Factory and American Eagle. All leases are for 20 years; …
  
  
• 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 …
  
  
• July 2014: NYC Building Sold & For Sale
• {dynamic_word1} Buildings {dynamic_word3} A development firm bought a pair of Financial District buildings from the Century 21 department store company for $46 million.The San Francisco-based investment and building firm inked a contract to buy a development site at 112-118 Fulton Street in Lower Manhattan from the Lightstone Group for more than $170 million.375 West Broadway may be {dynamic_word3} for $125 million. It {dynamic_word3} for $81 million last year.Michael Shvo is in contract to buy 22 Thames Street, or 125 Greenwich Street, from Fisher Brothers and Steven Witkoff for around $180 million.A New York-based asset firm is nearing a deal to …
  
  
• June 2014 New York Buildings For Sale
• New York Buildings For Sale The Rubin Museum of Art is looking to sell a Chelsea development site that delivers more than 70,000 buildable square feet of space. The site, which is now a seven-story building, is expected to go for $60 million. The site at 115 Seventh Avenue near West 17th Street is most valuable as a condominium-and-retail project. Thus, the current structure would have to be demolished.A local investment company that has for decades owned a building which houses a drug abuse treatment facility has put the property on the market. Many in the industry think the property …
  
  
• June 2014 New York New Developments
• Major Developments The South Bronx has had very few lodging destinations since the luxury Concourse Plaza Hotel at 161st Street and Grand Concourse closed in 1974. But now, with the opening of the luxury boutique Opera House Hotel at 436 East 149th Street last summer and the Umbrella Hotel looking to open 681 Elton Avenue this fall, the area’s hotel industry seems to be on the rebound.The Mayor’s administration has suggested rezoning a five-block stretch around Grand Central Terminal to allow for the construction of SL Green’s planned 65-story tower project at 1 Vanderbilt. De Blasio’s plan looks to partly …
  
  
• 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 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 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. …
  
  
• 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: 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 …
  
  
• 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 …
  
  
• 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 Buildings For Sale
• NYC Buildings For Sale A 20,083-square-foot residential development site at 505-511 West 43rd Street is for sale. The site is asking about $300 per buildable square foot, or nearly $50 million.The site, located between 10th and 11th Avenues, can accommodate 160,664 square feet of zoning floor area and 190 residential units but is complicated by its location above an active Amtrak rail line. As a result, potential development will require two special permits, to be obtained through the city’s Uniform Land Use Review Procedure.LCOR, a national investment, management and development company, is quietly shopping around its leasehold in a 17-story, …
  
  
• 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 …
  
  
• 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 …
  
  
• 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 …
  
  
• May 2013 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Retail rentson West 34th Street are now $1,000 a square foot. Swatch Group just signed a 10-year deal for 1,800 square feet at 112 West 34th Street, where the asking rent was $1,000 per square foot.The Chelsea/Meatpacking area of Midtown South had the lowest availability of office space of any of Manhattan’s 19 submarkets. 6.9 % of space was vacant in the first quarter of 2013, a drop from 9 % in the previous quarter.There are anumber of class A office buildings are for sale in Manhattan. This could be a sign of a real estate bubble. The total dollar …
  
  
• 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 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 …
  
  
• 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 …
  
  
• December 2012 New York Buildings For Sale
• NYC Buildings For Sale Grocery,real estate,private equity tycoon Ron Burkle has flipped his Meatpacking District property that he owns a majority interest in the building, which houses such retailers as Scoop boutique for close to $100 million to Joe Sitt of Thor Equities. Burkle bought the brick loft building at 430 West 14th Street for $65 million last year.Invesco is preparing to bring the Brill Building, at 1619 Broadway, on the market early next year. The 11-story building, on the corner of West 49th Street, totals 177,000 square feet and is best known for its musical history; the building served …
  
  
• 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, …
  
  
• October 2012 New York New Developments
• New Developments The re-zoning of Midtown is to affect the area from Lexington to Fifth avenues and East 39th to East 57th streets. Developers can buy additional air rights from the city. Within a smaller Grand Central Sub district developers can buy from owners of landmarked properties that are under built. Argent Ventures controls nearly all of those air rights through its ownership of the Grand Central terminal. The record sale price was about $6,000 a square foot in 2008 in residential, and has now reached more than $10,000 a square foot. The very-rich have finally unleashed the liquidity that …
  
  
• 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 …
  
  
• August 2012 New York New Developments
• New Developments As News Corp. contemplates splitting its entertainment and publishing divisions into two separate entities, the company’s space at 1211 Sixth Avenue is the subject of question for the first time in years. If separated, the two businesses might cease to operate under the same roof once their 1.9 million-square-foot lease expires in 2020. The Los Angeles construction firm Aecom is looking for ways to improve Penn Station. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority contracted Aecom to conduct this study, which is expected to be ready by the end of the year. The plan is not expected to radically transform the …
  
  
• July 2012 New York Buildings For Sale
• Buildings for Sale Vantage Properties and Area Property Partners have unloaded the Savoy Park apartment complex in Harlem for more than $210 million, satisfying the outstanding balance on the senior mortgage. Larry Silverstein is cutting his losses and moving on from Lexington Avenue. His Silverstein Properties and the California State Teachers’ Retirement System have entered contract to sell the 35-story office building at 575 Lexington Avenue for about $360 million to Normandy Real Estate Partners and New York Life Insurance. The deal is worth $10 million less than the agreement the owners nearly struck with Rockrose Development, before Henry Elghanayan …
  
  
• June 2012 New York Buildings For Sale
• NYC Buildings For Sale Forest City Ratner is looking to find an investor to take as much as a 49 percent stake in 8 Spruce Street, the tallest residential building in New York. The 76-story, 903-unit Frank Gehry-designed building is now 80 percent occupied.Thor Equities is seeking $45 million for the three-story, 15,525-square-foot building, at 446 West 14th Street, between Washington Street and 10th Avenue that it bought for $23.4 million in 2007.Vornado Realty Trust is marketing its stakes in three New York City-area malls, as the investment trust looks to exit the sector. Vornado wants to unload a 32.4 …
  
  
• 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 New Developments
• New Developments There are thousands of acres of rooftop space in New York City where growing farm operations are looking to expand. Groups such as Gotham Greens, Brooklyn Grange and BrightFarms are looking for elevated space where they can grow crops to sell to local restaurants and supermarketsSheldon Solow outdueled his West 57th Street rival and acquired an office building on the block at a near record price. Solow, bid $120 million for 12 West 57th Street to beat out One57 developer Gary Barnett, president of Extell Development, for the 12-story property. The price works out to more than $1,400 …
  
  
• 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 …
  
  
• January 2012: Manhattan City New Developments
• Manhattan New Developments Cornell University, in partnership with Technion-Israel Institute of Technology will build a 2 million-square-foot applied science and engineering campus on Roosevelt Island. Atlantic Philanthropies a charitable organization founded by billionaire Charles Feeney made the $350 million gift to go towards the creation of Cornell University's 2 million-square-foot applied science and engineering campus on Roosevelt Island. Feeney, who made billions of dollars through co-founding the Duty Free Shoppers Group, graduated from Cornell's School of Hotel Management in 1956, and has been consistently making donations to his alma mater.Brooklyn politicians were still hoping on another phrase the mayor uttered …
  
  
• 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 Buildings For Sale
• New York Buildings sold Africa Israel USA sold the Clock Tower building at 5 Madison Avenue for $165 million.and close January 2012. The buyer has made a $5 million deposit -- $2 million of which is non-refundable. Savanna formed a partnership with the Feil Organization to purchase the office building 21 Penn Plaza for $137 million. Previously Savanna picked up nearby 31 Penn Plaza for $130 million. It's also acquired 100 Wall Street, 80 Broad Street, 386 Park Avenue South, 104 West 40th Street, 1375 Broadway and 5 Hanover Square through a $550 million real estate investment fund it closed …
  
  
• 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 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, …
  
  
• September 2011 New York Buildings For Sale
• NYC Buildings For Sale The Apthorp JPMorgan Chase and Wells Fargo are two of the banks among the final candidates that bid for parts of $9.65 billion in U.S. property loans owned by Anglo Irish Bank. The lenders are interested in acquiring pieces of the $4.52 billion of performing loans. Investor groups led by private-equity firms Blackstone Group, together with Deutsche Bank, and Lone Star Funds also submitted offers for parts of the portfolio, which includes $5.13 billion of subperforming and non-performing debt. Anglo Irish aims to sell off its loans after it was seized by the Irish government in …
  
  
• September 2011 New York New Developments
• Major NYC Developments The London-based Children's Investment Fund inked its first New York City real estate investment this month, providing $250 million in first mortgages for Macklowe Properties' condominium conversion of the luxury apartment building 737 Park Avenue in Lenox Hill. The fund, makes investments in a wide range of industries globally, and gives a portion of its profits to children's charities around the world. "It is the first direct real estate investment we have made in New York," New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is hindering federal efforts to negotiate a foreclosure settlement with Wall Street banks on …
  
  
• September 2011 NYC Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Brookfield Office Properties, could complete its massive development site between Ninth avenue and Dyer avenue and 31st and 33rd streets, called "Manhattan West," by 2017, CEO Ric Clark said. The plan calls for four buildings, two of which are 2 million square feet each and span the north and south sides of the project, with another 1 million-square-foot building occupying the southwest corner. The fourth, a smaller building whose square footage is still undetermined, will be used for retail or office space. Construction is slated to begin on the project in January, and the first of the two biggest buildings …
  
  
• August 2011 New York Buildings For Sale
• NYC Buildings For Sale 397-401 East 8th Street a development site is on the market for $5.2 million, EV Grieve. Chang's McSam Hotel Group purchased the 4,324-square-foot vacant lot, at 397-401 East 8th Street, for $4.9 million site. Chang appears to be in the midst of a selling spree -- he recently unloaded stalled hotel project sites in the Financial District and in Union Square, as well as his new Holiday Inn Express at 126 Water Street. A month after merging with EBSCO Publishing, library reference publisher H.W. Wilson has decided to market its former headquarters and nearby land holdings …
  
  
• July 2011 New York New Developments
• New Developments Governor Andrew Cuomo, signed a statewide property tax cap legislation, caps property tax increases at 2 percent, or the rate of inflation, whichever is less. Only a 60 percent vote in local communities override Cuomo's legislation. "We are beginning a new era in which New York will no longer be the tax capital of the nation," Cuomo said Community activists opposing the Rudin family's proposed takeover of the St. Vincent's Hospital campus in Greenwich Village dropped their court appeal without ever appearing before a judge.New York led a second consecutive month of U.S. housing price gains. Nationwide home …
  
  
• July 2011 New York Buildings For Sale
• New York Buildings sold Newly landmarked 70 Pine sells for $205M to Nathan Berman's Metro Loft Management, or $186 per square foot,. Metro signed on to buy the 1.1 million-square-foot tower, the fifth tallest in the city at 66 stories, from Kumho Investment Bank of South Korea. Kumho previously purchased the building, along with 72/74 Wall Street, from AIG for $150 million.. The Henry T. Sloane mansion at 18 East 68th Street, between Madison and Fifth avenues, sold at auction yesterday to its only bidder -- Alexander Rovt, a Ukrainian-born billionaire fertilizer magnate -- for $40 million, the amount in …
  
  
• 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 …
  
  
• 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 …
  
  
• May 2011 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• The Manhattan office vacancy rate increased in the first quarter of 2011 even as employment in the professional sector rose at the fastest rate since 2000. There were 11,500 new office workers in the first three months of this year. The first-quarter vacancy rate rose even as employment moved up because, large blocks of space being added to the market from tenants who signed relocation deals last year, and because many firms have excess space for their new hires.New York City office rentals got more expensive in the first quarter of 2011, even as vacancy and absorption rates remained mostly …
  
  
• May 2011 New York Buildings For Sale
• New York Buildings sold Joseph Sitt's Thor Equities and developer Joseph Moinian have completed the long awaited deal to buy out Goldman Sachs at 245 Fifth Avenue for $162 million. The property, near 28th Street, had been up for sale since January, when Moinian and his previous venture partner, Goldman Sachs Whitehall Funds, decided to put the building up for sale through Eastdil Secured. The property was originally purchased for $190 million, or $620 a square foot, at the height of the market in 2007.RXR Realty purchased the Starrett-Leigh building at 601 West 26th Street for $900 million from Shorenstein …
  
  
• April 2011 New York New Developments
• Major Trends Bruce Ratner wants to construct the world's tallest prefabricated structure at the Atlantic Yards site in Brooklyn, according to the New York Times. The 34-story proposed tower would include 400 affordable apartment units, fulfilling a promise Ratner made when he took over the site. The annual rate of building permits issued for new privately-owned U.S. housing units fell by another 8.2 percent in February to a record-low 517,000, according to the latest data from the Commerce Department, backing up analysts' predictions that a sustained recovery in the housing market is still elusive. The permitting rate, which is indicative …
  
  
• April 2011 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Manhattan's office leasing market is on pace for its best year ever after February brought some 3 million square feet worth of deals,. That's far above the nine-year monthly average of 1.9 million square feet of office leases. The banner month also comes on the heels of a busy January, when 2.6 million square feet were snapped up in Manhattan office lease transactionsManhattan townhouses see 2010 sales uptickBoth the single-family and multi-family Manhattan townhouse markets showed signs of improvement last year, according to the Corcoran Group, which released its first annual Townhouse Report today. In the single-family market, the number …
  
  
• 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 Buildings For Sale
• New York City Buildings sold Brack Capital Real Estate USA has sold the retail portion of its residential development at 15 Union Square West in New York City to the State Teachers Retirement System of Ohio, or STRS, for $57.88 million. The retail space consists of four retail stores on the first, mezzanine and cellar floors of the building, totaling 14,494 square feet. Three of the spaces are currently leased : one to HSBC Bank, one to Lululemon Athletica, and another to Sketchers.Real estate investment trust SL Green has acquired the remaining ownership interest in 521 Fifth Avenue, a 39-story …
  
  
• 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 …
  
  
• January 2011 New York New Developments
• New Developments Columbia University may be moving forward with plans for a $6.3 billion expansion after the U.S. Supreme Court rejected an appeal by local businesses whose properties may be subject to eminent domain. The justices refused to question findings by a state development agency and said that the area is blighted and that the expansion has a legitimate public purpose. Several years back, retail giant Walmart tried to open stores in Queens and Staten Island, but backed off after fierce community opposition. Now the discount chain store is trying again to break into the New York City market, since …
  
  
• December 2010 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• NY Commercial Real Estate Overview The Port Authority finalized its "backstop financing" agreement with Larry Silverstein for 4 World Trade Center, which allows the developer to place $1.3 billion in Liberty Bonds for the $1.8 billion tower. At the Nov. 18 board meeting, the PA approved the final documents. By converting the bonds to a construction loan, it will enable 4 WTC to be completed to its ultimate 64 stories. The PA itself will be an anchor tenant with about 800,000 square feet of the tower's total 2.1 million feet. Meanwhile, $1.3 billion more in Liberty Bonds remain in escrow …
  
  
• November 2010 New York New Developments
• Major Developments Despite a slight rise in the vacancy rate, which rose .5 points to 9.3 percent on top of the decline in asking rents. To illustrate the demand can be seen by a new retailer trying to elbow into the high-traffic area, an existing store agreed to relinquish its space after its lease was bought out.New York City had $4.74 billion worth of delinquent commercial property loans as of Oct. 1, down 0.6 percent from one month ago, when there was $4.77 billion outstanding. The decline can be largely accounted for by Joseph Moinian's 1775 Broadway which had been …
  
  
• October 2010 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Overall asking rent for Manhattan office space climbed slightly to $47.73 per square foot in August, up from $47.57 per square foot in July. The vacancy rate in Manhattan also showed modest improvement, dropping gradually month-over-month to 13.4 percent, from 13.7 percent. Compared to August 2009, vacancy was down .5 percent. Of all the boroughs prime office neighborhoods, the Downtown market struggled the most showing its slowest leasing momentum since September 2009, as the vacancy rate remained steady at 14.3 percent. Midtown, however, showed promise: 10.55 million square feet has been leased so far this year, up 56 percent from …
  
  
• October 2010 New York New Developments
• Major Developments The number of retail condominiums for sale in the city is on the rise, with this year's supply already up 30 percent as developers have adjusted to the new economic landscape. Next year, there will be more going through the pipeline once the foreclosures and loans are settled. While an influx of new retail space coming on the market could test the recovery as pent-up demand diminishes, things are, so far, looking good for developers. The first phase of the Second Avenue Subway is running two years behind schedule and is set to run $420 million over budget. …
  
  
• 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 Buildings For Sale
• New York City Buildings sold An investment fund affiliated with residential and commercial property owner Stonehenge Partners closed on the $67.34 million purchase of the former St. Vincent's Hospital residential building at 555 Sixth Avenue in Greenwich Village. Investors in the purchase include an entity called SITQ, which is a subsidiary of Canadian investment fund Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec, and another Canadian institutional investor. Stonehenge won the 180,000-square-foot building in an auction which followed the bankruptcy of the hospital in April. Hotel owners Richard Born and Ira Drukier, principals with BD Hotels, led a partnership that bought …
  
  
• 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 …
  
  
• 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 …
  
  
• May 2010 New York Buildings For Sale
• New York City Buildings sold The retail space at 40 Mercer, the Jean Nouvel-designed condo, has sold for $41.9 million. The space at 465 Broadway contains 9,400 square feet of space at the ground level. SL Green is buying Hines Interests' 600 Lexington Avenue for almost $180 million, or $700 a square foot. The 282,000-square-foot office tower is one of three major city properties of its kind that had been attracting attention from investors while on the market despite the sector's slump. The others are 340 Madison Avenue and 125 Park Avenue. The acquisition for the city's largest landlord follows …
  
  
• April 2010 New York New Developments
• New Developments The number of small- to mid-size medical and bio-pharmacy companies in the city has quadrupled to 120 from 2002, due to the city's recruitment and the accessibility of academic centers in the area. The Upper East Side girls' prep school has cancelled its expansion into the nearby apartment building. The Brearley School, at 610 East 83rd Street, had been angling to buy half the building at 85 East End Avenue, for use as additional teaching space but has fallen through. Extended Stay Hotels may accept a $905 million investment offer from Starwood Capital Group and associated investors in …
  
  
• 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 …
  
  
• February 2010 New York New Developments
• New Developments The year-end review of Manhattan commercial real estate casts doubt on 2010's outlook. Commercial property sales volume was weak through the end of 2009, with projections suggesting that the total volume for the year was just $5.7 billion, a decline from $23.6 billion in 2008 and $62.8 billion in 2007.Manhattan commercial property sales volume remained slow through the end of 2009. Total commercial property sales for the year were just $5.5 billion, down from the peak level of $62.8 billion in 2007, and less than a third of the total sales made in 2008. There is pent-up energy …
  
  
• February 2010 New York Buildings For Sale
• Manhattan Buildings sold Developer Sheldon Solow sold a small piece of his 9.2-acre East River development site to the city's School Construction Authority for $33.25 million. The parcel at the northeast corner of First Avenue and 35th Street is about a third of a complete block he owns through his East River Realty Company. Although part of the larger $4 billion East River development plan, it is two blocks south of the largest parcel in the project that runs on the east side of First Avenue between 38th and 41st streets. The city signed the contract and closed on the …
  
  
• 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 …
  
  
• October 2009 New York Buildings For Sale
• New York Buildings For Sale 29 W 30th St is for sale for $55,000,000 a 68,764 SF Class C Office Building.609-615 2nd Avenue is for sale for $33,000,000 a 52,800 SF Retail Building.408-412 W 129th St is for sale for $7,500,000 a 45,080 SF Multi-Family Apartment Units Building.440-446 Saint Nicholas Ave is for sale for $5,000,000 a 29,190 SF Multi-Family Apartment Units Building.119 Madison Avenue and 29 East 30th Street for sale for $19,500,000, having a total size of 132,552 SF.537-543 W 20th St is for sale for $14,000,000 a 27,600 SF Class C Industrial Warehouse Building.164 E 61st St …
  
  
• October 2009 New York New Developments
• Major Developments Stalled construction projects are not having much of a psychological impact on the city. Despite an increasing number of delayed projects, including 250 West 55th Street, 99 Church Street and Solow's First Avenue project, any psychological effects are likely to be short-lived, because the projects will be completed eventually. Large banks are only about halfway done with their commercial real estate losses. The U.S. commercial real estate losses could reach 10 or 15 percent of loans in this cycle. Banks with retail and office loans face the highest risk.The Plaza hotel is on tough times. The building's lower …
  
  
• September 2009 New York New Developments
• New Developments New building permits issued in the first five months of 2009 showed a year-over-year drop in all five boroughs for the second year in a row. Citywide, permits were down 48.5 percent from the same period last year to 720, and were down 69 percent from the first half of 2007, when the building boom was still in full force. Of the five boroughs, Manhattan saw the biggest drop from last year, with 18 building permits filed between January and May, or 72.3 percent fewer than in the same period of 2008. This number was off 71.9 percent …
  
  
• August 2009 New York New Developments
• New Developments After many years of construction on Fulton Street, small business owners are now able to apply for grants from the city to improve storefronts that have been obstructed or damaged by the construction. The Fulton Nassau Crossroads Program, funded by the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation, offers free design, engineering and construction management, along with $275,000 for construction, to buildings located on Fulton and Nassau streets.Law firm Orrick Herrington & Sutcliffe may sign a lease for 220,000 square feet at 51 West 52nd Street. They will take the space previously occupied by UBS and Cushman & Wakefield. Cushman will …
  
  
• July 2009 New York Buildings For Sale
• Manhattan Buildings sold The AIG buildings -- 70 Pine Street, which might become a landmark, and 72 Wall Street -- sold for less than $140 million, under $100 a foot. Youngwoo & Associates and Kumho Investment Bank agreed to buy the buildings, AIG's former headquarters, which total 1.4 million square feet. The buyers are expected to create a mixed-use development that could include residential and retail space, and will have to put down at least a $10 million deposit at the contract signing. Because of anti-terror legislation, the Department of State will have to approve the overseas buyer.The president of …
  
  
• July 2009 New York New Developments
• New Developments The Federal Reserve has few deals for the start of its program to aid the commercial real estate market. Today is the first monthly deadline for investors to apply for loans to buy new commercial mortgage-backed securities through the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility. The Fed will start accepting investor requests for loans to purchase older CMBS.James Abadie, head of New York operations for construction firm Bovis Lend Lease, has resigned amid investigations of the company for alleged overbilling and bribery. Bovis is working on the September 11th Memorial and the demolition of the Deutsche Bank building.Global real …
  
  
• June 2009 New York Buildings For Sale
• Manhattan Buildings sold A second-floor duplex at the Plaza Hotel Residences sold for $2,751 per square foot, about half the price that similarly sized units were closing for last year. The three-bedroom unit with 4,283 square feet was sold by the developer, Elad Properties, to a company called Paradeplatz Ltd. for $11.786 million. The condo faces Central Park in the rehabilitated hotel at 768 Fifth Avenue. The Windermere has been sold to Windermere Property LLC, a company that made an agreement with the city to repair the landmarked building. The former owner and Tokyo-based developer Toa Construction had reached a …
  
  
• 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 …
  
  
• April 2009 New York New Developments
• New Developments New York City Department of Parks & Recreation officials showed its plans for parks around the new Yankee Stadium, which was built on land within the footprint of two parks that residents want replaced. The parks department plans to a park with a track and athletic field, plus two stories of parking, in the area. The department will also build tennis courts and parkland. The old Yankee Stadium will become Heritage Field Park by spring 2011.Stellar Management's president is in negotiations to settle a lawsuit against Landesbank Baden, Deutsche Hypo and State Street Bank after they allegedly cut …
  
  
• 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 …
  
  
• February 2009 New York New Developments
• New Developments Lehman Brothers filed suit to begin foreclosure proceedings on Kent Swig's 45 Broad Street. Swig had been planning to build a 62-story Nobu Hotel and Residences on the property, with 77 luxury condos, 128 hotel rooms and 13,000 square feet of retail. Trump Marina Hotel Casino Trump Entertainment Resorts has struck a deal with lenders and note holders had until Jan. 21 to try negotiating a restructuring of its debt. Trump had delayed paying a $53.1 million bond interest payment that was due in December, and the 30-day grace period expired. The Atlantic City, N.J.-based company had hoped …
  
  
• January 2009 New York New Developments
• New Developments Lenders are going into bankruptcy and the sales market is disappearing, causing developers all over New York to face choices about how to ride out this down cycle.Over $400 billion in mortgages on commercial properties, including office towers and shopping malls, are to come due by the end of 2009. Even if these properties are performing well, they could go into foreclosure if mortgage holders are unable to pay off the loans. The commercial real estate market has shifted from property sales toward the purchase and sale of debt, where the loan, rather than the actual real estate, …
  
  
• 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 …
  
  
• November 2008 New York New Developments
• New DevelopmentsIn the last few days, banks have begun lending to one another, signifying a thaw in credit markets that have been frozen for weeks. But despite those promising signs, a chill still seems to be pervading the commercial real estate market. The 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.With Lehman Brothers locked in bankruptcy, many real estate firms do not have financing to complete construction, meet lease obligations or pay vendors to complete sales, raising the prospect …
  
  
• November 2008 New York Buildings For Sale
• NYC Buildings For Sale236 Second Avenue, an East Village 12,366-square-foot building, formerly housing Gateway Schools is on the market, along with an adjacent townhouse. It is located at 15th Street has seven floors contains nine classrooms, a gym, multi-purpose room, art room, library, offices and a courtyard.1540 Broadway may be for sale as the remaining Harry Macklowe's Midtown portfolio moves into the final phase.Bossert Hotel Developer RAL Companies walked from its agreement to purchase the former Bossert Hotel, located at 98 Montague Street, for $92 million from the Watchtower Group. The property will return to the market soon, probably with …
  
  
• 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 New Developments
• New DevelopmentsMacklowe Properties demolished the old Drake Hotel at Park Avenue and 56th Street but has not started building 440 Park Avenue yet. Extell still has not filed plans for its West 57th and 58th Street project, which was supposed to be a 50-story hotel-condo. Starwood Capital cleared a low-rise fur shop between the Economist building and the Buckingham Hotel; plans for a Crillon hotel haven not been realized. TriBeach has stopped work on its Eighth Avenue 37-story hotel-condo building, leaving a crater in two buildings on the lot between 46th and 47th streets. Although the plans have not been …
  
  
• September 2008 New York Buildings For Sale
• NYC Buildings For SaleNew York Buildings soldLehman Brothers Holdings Inc. is negotiating to sell its $40 billion portfolio of commercial real estate. A group led by Boston Properties finalized the purchase of Harry Macklowe's Two Grand Central Tower buying it for $237 million and the assumption of $190 million in mortgage debt. Real estate firms rich in cash have snatched up the most high-profile office towers on the market in Manhattan this year, while highly-leveraged players have been sidelined. Shorenstein Properties bought two of the seven office buildings that Harry Macklowe needed to unload, the Park Avenue Tower at 65 …
  
  
• August 2008 New York New Developments
• New DevelopmentsOffice availability rises along with asking rents. Manhattan commercial rents increased in the year's first half even as the available for leasing increased. Average asking rents increased to $71.35 per square foot in June up from $63.46 per square foot in June, 2007. Despite an increase in leasing activity in the second quarter, the total for the first half of the year was 10.47 million square feet, a decline of about 1.5 million square feet from the same period in 2007. Some commercial landlords are raising the rents higher than ever before. L&L; Holding Company is asking for a …
  
  
• July 2008 New York New Developments
• New DevelopmentsThe city has reached a deal with a developer that will bring schools to a mixed-use development planned for Midtown East. With financing from New York City Educational Construction Fund, the World Wide Group will build a new elementary school and a new high school that would replace the High School for Art and Design. In exchange, the city will lease the developer a 1.5-acre site at East 57th Street and Second Avenue. World Wide plans to build 200,000 square feet of retail and 488,000 square feet of residential space. Mayor Michael Bloomberg unveiled a plan to rejuvenate the …
  
  
• May 2008 New York New Developments
• New DevelopmentsVornado Realty Trust was selected to redevelop and expand the West Side trade show facility between 51st and 54th streets on the West Side Highway. The New York City Economic Development Corporation chose Vornado and its subsidiary Merchandise Mart Properties to expand the facility. The project is to create 355,000 square feet of trade show and conference space. Broadway Partners, a New York-based real estate investor, bought several billion dollars worth of property in 2006 and 2007, at the height of the market, borrowing short-term debt that comes due in 2009. The company is considering selling some properties and …
  
  
• April 2008 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• The office and retail markets are starting to cool from all time highs, as Banks and Investment Banks continue layoffs, 34,400 layoffs in the last six months. These financial firms are now releasing unused and expansion back to the market which total more than 2.5 million square feet with more to follow. There are still a number of large users looking for space, but now there is more of a selection and as a result pricing and terms will improve.Developer Larry Silverstein seeks $12.3 billion in damages from the destruction of the World Trade Center. The $12.3 billion amount of …
  
  
• 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 …
  
  
• October 2007 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• Highest Manhattan rents surpassing $200/RSFWith Class A market vacancies in Midtown at 5.1%, (levels not seen since 2001), Landlords are competing to see who can charge the highest rents. Highest asking rents of $225/RSF are reported for the top floors of 9 West 57th Street, $185 for the remaining floor at One Brant Park, to name a just a few. A sampling of 80 Class A Office buildings leased from April to September showed an increase in average direct lease rents from $99.00 to $107.50 per RSF. Governor Moves Closer to a Costlier Javits Plan The Spitzer administration told hotel …
  
  
• July 2007 New York Commercial Real Estate Market Report
• New York City New Construction:Sitt of Thor Equities scaling back plans for Coney Island from 2 billion to 1.5 billion. Sitt has already spent $120 million buying up land. Dropped 40 story tower. Rental apartment and condominiums and making project less dense.New York City Buildings Leases:Davis Polk renewed and expanded lease to 650,000 sf at 450 Lexington Avenue.MTV Networks Entertainment Group leases 400,000 sf at 345 Hudson Street.Limited Brands renewed lease of 125,000 sf at 400 Lafayette Street.BBDO renewed lease of 41,000 sf at 1375 Broadway.Choice Logistics leases 34,000 sf at 1 Whitehall Street.NaviSite Corporation leases 33,000 sf at 395 …
  
  
• July 2007 New York New Developments
• New York City New Construction Sitt of Thor Equities scaling back plans for Coney Island from 2 billion to 1.5 billion. Sitt has already spent $120 million buying up land. Dropped 40 story tower. Rental apartment and condominiums and making project less dense.
  
  
• March 2007 New York Buildings For Sale
• New York City Buildings For Sale Freedom Tower is for sale and bids are being solicited by the Port Authority of NY/NJ. 1344 York Avenue, a 470,000 RSF building, is for sale, asking $500 Million. 90 Fifth Avenue, a 129,000 RSF building, is for sale, asking $100 Million. Manhattan Buildings Sold 450 West 33rd Street, a 800,000 RSF office building, sold for about $700 Million. One Park Avenue, a 913,000 RSF office building, sold for $550 Million or $602/RSF. 2 Park Avenue, a 960,000 RSF office building, was sold for $519 Million. 1745 Broadway, a 675,000 RSF office building, was …
  
  
• January 2007 New York Buildings For Sale
• New York Buildings sold Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village, a 11,232 residential units in 110 buildings was sold to Tishman Speyer, Blackrock Realty for $5.4 billion. 666 Fifth Avenue was sold to Kushner for $1.8 billion or $1,200/RSF. Kushner is reported to be selling the retail space of 99,000 SF for $640 Million. 350 Park Avenue, a 37-story, 538,000 sf office building, was sold to Vornado Realty Trust Holdings for $542 million. 1330 6th Avenue was sold to Macklow for $498 million. 1330 6th Avenue is a 522,000 RSF class A office building. 2207 Broadway and 390 West End …