From the BAM Cultural District to Williamsburg, Brooklyn is undergoing a hotel boom. And pretty soon, all of those workers—or at least, the unionized ones—will have a new place to go for check-ups.
The New York Hotel Trades Council & Hotel Association of New York City, the city’s leading hotel workers’ union, and its Employee Benefit Funds just picked up a $19 million parking lot at 620 Fulton Street in downtown Brooklyn, on an irregularly-shaped lot bounded by Fulton Street, Ashland Place and St. Felix Street.
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432 Park’s penthouse is in contract for $95 M., also the luxury market’s hot. [NYT] Tom Cruise’s (rumored) townhouse hits the market for $28 million. [Curbed] Cobble Hill preschool closes for lack of license, takes classes to the parks. [Daily News] Also in Cobble Hill, police search for Urban Outfitters pants bandits. [Bk Paper] Mourning the (sort of) end of a beloved used bookstore in South Slope. [L Magazine] Townhouse on West 77th tries to triple its price post renovation. [Curbed] Helmsly Hotel on Central Park South is ready for its condo conversion. [WSJ] The good, the bad and the ugly: Brooklyn stoop sales kick off again. [Park Slope Stoop] The post-collegiate housing hunt when you’re a New York native. [NYT] Bushwick sees huge surge in liquor license applications. [DNAinfo] LES co-op installs fuel-efficient natural gas boiler. [Daily News] Developers cater to family-friendly demands along the High Line. [NYT] Joe Lhota snags more real estate cash than any other mayoral candidate. [TRD] East Williamsburg strip sees alarmingly fast business turnover. [DNAinfo] A quest to save New York’s disappearing diners. [Atlantic Cities] The Four Seasons’ rent is currently below market and poised to jump. [Crain's] Greenwich mansion tries for $190 million, believed to be the most expensive in the US. [WSJ] Remembering the St. Vincent’s Hospital and its role in the AIDS crisis. [New Yorker] The Ansonia condos still have super old-fashioned, charming floorplans. [Curbed] Pratt students plead with school not to destroy the stray cat population. [DNAinfo] New Jersey home owners resist state’s attempt to shield their properties with dunes. [WSJ] West Village nursing home converts to luxury condos, penthouse sells for $29 M. [NYT] Light will finally be restored to Hudson River Park some seven months after Sandy. [Crain's]
Poor, lonely, luxury condo tower! Unlike the co-ops lining Central Park to the East and the West, whose residents really love them, it seems like One57′s new residents are only interested in it for its money. Or, more precisely, how their money might become even more money if they buy apartments there.
As the condo’s top-floor units go into contract, New Yorker’s real estate community has been speculating on who the super-secretive billionaires buying there are. Tantalizingly, Extell confirmed two contracts for more than $90 million, but for months and months and months, there’s been no indication of who the buyers might be. So imagine the collective glee when The Wall Street Journal revealed that one of the buyers was billionaire hedge funder William Ackman. Sort of.
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With the New York City mayor’s race not even past the Democratic primary, it’s a bit early to be handicapping the city’s next chief city planner, but where’s the fun in being coy?
Crain’s has taken a look at who might fill the post, which it calls “perhaps more important than any deputy mayor position at City Hall,” arriving at a short list that includes names ranging from Vishaan Chakrabarti, a consummate real estate industry insider and former director of the Manhattan office of the Department of City Planning, to the more community-minded Anna Levin, a member of the City Planning Commission and the chair of Manhattan Community Board 4′s Land Use Commission during most of the 2000s.
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The Four Seasons Restaurant, home of the “power lunch,” is facing a six-fold rent increase when its current lease expires in 2016, The Huffington Post reported yesterday. The iconic New York eatery, which currently pays $19.74 per square foot, could be looking at rents of $125 per square foot for its 29,476-square-foot space inside the Seagram Building at 375 Park Avenue.
Documents viewed by the Huff Post indicate that as part of the owners’ $782.8 million mortgage deal, financed jointly by Citigroup and Deutsche Bank and being marketed to investors via commercial mortgage backed securities, bankers expect management at the property to begin charging the The Four Seasons market rents, which according to the documents are determined to be $125 per square foot.
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A-Train service to the Rockaways to be restored by month’s end. [Crain's] Buying vs. renting in Brooklyn’s tight real estate market. [DNAinfo] Tear the Folk Art Museum down! cries critic. [TRD] Rent-hiked tenants groups hate Anthony Weiner for decontrolling units. [Post] Jersey City Heights creates arts district, hopes to draw creative types. [WSJ] Only fair-market tenants allowed to use Tribeca condo’s gym. [Tribeca Citizen] Garodnick questions sunrise provision in Midtown East rezoning. [Crain's] Flowerbox apartment wants more in resale attempt. [Curbed] Inside Eli Zabar’s UES townhouse. [NYT] City plans to sell off councilwoman Inez Dickens’ real estate debts. [Daily News] Elderly woman is the last to leave Fourth Avenue development site. [DNAinfo] Bill Ackman leads a group set to buy One57 penthouse for more than $90 M. [WSJ] Union Square’s Zeckendorf Towers becomes largest no smoking building in US. [Post] Critics slam plan to swap Flushing Meadows greenspace for old airport. [Daily News]
The Park Regis at 50 East 89th Street isn’t what normally comes to mind when one thinks of $14 million penthouses. Built in 1974, it lacks the classical prewar touches of its Park and Fifth Avenue neighbors, and the standard unit sizes range from studios to two-bedrooms—not quite the palatial spreads that one expects from an eight-digit Upper East Side tower.
But what it lacks in outward beauty, the co-op makes up for with its interior and its views. Perched on the 32nd and 33rd floors, the unit has jaw-dropping views of Central Park, with just enough city in the frame to give it a Manhattan flavor (“Located in historic Carnegie Hill, The Park Regis offers the atmosphere of a small town,” the building description claims—unconvincingly, if you ask us, the UES being one of America’s densest neighborhoods), but not so much that you can’t make out every feature in the park. The Central Park Reservoir is especially prominent. The grand prewar apartments on Fifth and Park may have stately exteriors, but they generally top out at around half the height of the Park Regis.
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Frank Sinatra’s old duplex at 530 East 72nd Street finally got under someone’s skin. And this despite a “meticulous” renovation in recent years that included the installation of the exact same staircase as the one in the Apple stores and some other rather hideous unique design choices.
The New York Post reports that the “glittering grotto in the sky”—as Andy Warhol once referred to the Sinatra-era party pad—is in contract to the daughter of a Chinese technology tycoon. Maybe she found the Apple staircase homey?
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Long Island real estate scion Steven Klar was obviously not having much luck offloading his massive, octagonal condo at CitySpire Center with Douglas Elliman. The much-maligned “trophy” vanished from the market in January, when Mr. Klar dumped the brokerage—a win for Elliman?—and decided to lick his wounds for a few months and/or get fired up for another try.
At $100 million, more than any home in New York City has ever sold for, the price was widely mocked. Why, people asked, would Mr. Klar think he could best One57′s penthouses, which have reportedly entered into contract for more than $90 million, in a late ’80s building and a unit that he bought for only $4.5 million in the early ’90s (and hasn’t renovated since)?
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Here comes the bride! Gowanus to get its first bridal boutique. [DNAinfo] Greenpoint residents love the mysterious rooster who wakes them up at dawn. [Bk Paper] Crowdfunding real estate projects spreads to Brooklyn. [NYT] Judge orders city to continue housing residents displaced by Sandy. [WSJ] Finishing up a nine-unit apartment building in Bed-Stuy. [Brownstoner] Shuttered seaport bars open wine and beer pop-up. [DNAinfo] Developers put a fence through middle of magical children’s garden on LES. [Curbed] Will generation Y and their downtown-living ways change the housing game? [WSJ] Rockaway co-op claims that rush to repair beach damaged the property. [Daily News] Stuy-town’s mid-lease rent hike infuriates tenants. [Crain's] Architect Ismael Leyva lists Central Park West apartment for $7.75 million. [TRD]
