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Jeff Gural and Jimmy Kuhn, Bearish Before It Was Cool
Do you have any thoughts on the World Trade Center development? Do you want it to get built?
Mr. Kuhn: Next question.
Do you think the market can sustain an additional 10 million square feet of office space?
Mr. Kuhn: No.
Mr. Gural: But again, it’s hard to look ahead that far. If we always knew what was going to happen in seven years, we’d be very smart. Certainly, while it’s true that we were not enticed into buying buildings for $1,000 a foot, nor did we think Lehman Brothers and Merill Lynch would be out of business. More here.Shravan Vidyarthi.
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Hug It Out! William Morris Endeavor Hunts for Fresh N.Y.C. Digs
Talent agency William Morris Endeavor Entertainment—the creature born of April’s Endeavor–William Morris coupling—is hunting for new, combined office space in Manhattan, digs befitting its new image, whatever that may be.
Actually, if Ariel Emanuel is anything like Entourage’s Ari Gold (the character inspired by him) or his brother Rahm, we have some idea: cutthroat, sleek, shiny in a fake, L.A. sort of way.
We’re told the firm’s current offices, at Paramount Group’s 1325 Avenue of the Americas and Rockrose Development’s Carnegie Hill Tower at 152 West 57th Street, are a tad on the fuddy-duddy side. More here.
PropertyShark.
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New York’s Most Exclusive Office Building
In the late 17th and early 18th centuries, the Gobelins manufactory wove tapestries for Louis XIV, the absolutist French ruler, who espoused the theory of the divine right of kings. According to that theory, dauphins were not merely born lucky onto plush velvet thrones of ungodly wealth and power. No, they actually carried the mark, indeed the ordination, of the divine.
In the 21st century, you can walk up Madison Avenue, turn right onto 61st Street and enter a recessed cove well removed from the commoners’ foot traffic. Pass through the doors and into the 40-foot-tall limestone lobby of 667 Madison Avenue, arguably the most exclusive office building in New York City, and you will find, on the wall behind the bow-tied concierge, one of those Gobelins tapestries.
The message could not be clearer: Here live the Sun Kings. More here.
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Really at a Loss
Jacky Teplitzky, who was a sergeant in the Israeli army before she became a top broker at Prudential Douglas Elliman, was on the phone with an Upper East Side seller earlier this year. “Without going to the apartment, my opening statement was, ‘Do you understand you’re going to lose money?’”
Manhattan brokers, who used to practically guffaw about New York’s beautifully, effortlessly, naturally rising luxury real estate prices, are conceding that gargantuan real estate bought during the boom will likely sell at gargantuan, maybe multimillion-dollar, losses.
What was once a freakish nightmare—only the masses take losses!—is now accepted with a matter-of-fact shrug: “Panic at the Plaza” was the headline in October on the Web site Curbed when the asking price for a unit bought for $14.94 million was lowered to $14.5 million. This month’s news that the apartment sold for $8.5 million, nearly half of what it had been bought for, didn’t make much of a ripple. More here.
1125 Park Avenue via PropertyShark.
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Lease Beat: 8.12.09
A small positive for Mizuho Bank, whose stock has lately been performing on the unimpressive side: It succeeded in unloading 27,030 square feet at One State Street Plaza. T3 Capital Management has signed a 13-year sublease for the space, with the asking rent $45 a square foot. Norman Bobrow, of the eponymous Norman Bobrow & Company, represented the tenant in negotiations with CB Richard Ellis’ Robert Flippin and Adam Foster, who repped the Japanese bank. More here.
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Good News? Lawyers Lease at 1350 Broadway, Debt Dealer at 1114 Sixth
The world is falling to pieces. Snap them up while you can.
Tarter Krinsky & Drogin, one of the few law firms expanding in the recession, has just signed a 13-year expansion and renewal for 26,800 square feet at W&H’s 1350 Broadway.
“We’re in a unique position,” said Alan Tarter, a principal in the full-service firm. “We have been the beneficiary of taking talent from larger firms.” And business. More here.
1114 Sixth via PropertyShark.
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Condo Shame: Hipsters Hear Siren Song of Shiny, Well-Priced Apartments
Nicole Ferejohn, 27, was paying $1,200 per month to rent a walk-up apartment on Avenue A and St. Marks about a year ago when she decided that it was time to own, invest, reduce the tax load a bit. She was thinking brownstone, original moldings, maybe some brick or a tin ceiling, a quirky layout.
“But then I started looking and I was like, ‘Holy bejesus, they’re all like a million dollars!’” said Ms. Ferejohn, who works at Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
She never before would’ve considered the glossy new condo developments in various Brooklyn neighborhoods that advertise stainless steel appliances, doormen, contemporary sinks and globular light fixtures. But the market had faltered, they were suddenly in her price range, and hell, what’s so wrong with nice views anyway? More here.
