Commercial Breaks
Real Estate Sits Out '08 Race—For Now
During a June 18 appearance on CNBC’s Squawk Box, Steven Roth, New York real estate kingpin and the chairman and CEO of Vornado Realty Trust, suggested that a President Barack Obama could lead the United States out of its economic imbroglio.
“President Obama comes in, O.K.—that’s not a political prediction by the way, this is just a fantasy—and somehow or other, he does what he says he was going to do. He gets us out of the war,” began Mr. Roth in his heavily inflected New Yorkese.
In Mr. Roth’s imagined course of events—related to a deeply skeptical roundtable of pundits—the future president would use the billions of dollars that aren’t wasted overseas, coupled with increased tax revenues, to pay down the deficit.
The Lab
No, We Can’t
Manhattan apartment rents will likely exit the summer as high as—if not significantly higher than—they entered it. It wasn’t supposed to be like this, of course: Everything was going to change because of the flaccid local economy, wilting under the strain of Wall Street layoffs and inflated living costs. Deals would abound.
But the layoffs have been gradual: about 2,000 in the city’s financial services sector in the past year, according to the state’s Labor Department; and the number of private sector jobs increased annually just 0.6 percent. The city’s unemployment rate in June was up to a seasonally adjusted 5.
The Sit-Down
Business Owners vs. the M.B.A. Mayor
Location: How long has your family been out here?
Mr. Fodera: We’re just about an 80-year-old company; we’ve always operated in the city of New York, but we’ve been in Willets Point in this facility for almost 35 years.
Why’d you move out to Willets?
It’s tremendous as far as highway access, as well as the labor force, and it put us very close to our customers.
You do food distribution?
Bakery ingredient distribution. My clients start from the mom-and-pop stores right up to the biggest bakeries in the city.
Tales of Retail
The Penn Is Mightier
Veteran punk rocker Jello Biafra didn’t trash his hotel room during a recent trip to New York. It was already trashed.
“The air-conditioners are so old and beat up, I figure why waste electrical power during an energy crunch when I can just take off all my clothes and work nude?” quipped Mr. Biafra, the 50-year-old former lead singer of the irreverent Reagan-era rock band the Dead Kennedys and a onetime fringe presidential candidate. “I come from cold, foggy San Francisco, so I like it when the heat is sweltering. It’s a nice treat to work nude.”
He was staying at the historic Hotel Pennsylvania, a veritable musical landmark befitting the songwriter responsible for the satirical travel anthem “Holiday in Cambodia.
Manhattan Transfers
The Voodoo Economics of 15 Central Park West: Why the $100 M. Listings Are All in Your Head
Even though the most expensive single residential deal ever documented in New York City is still a $53 million townhouse sale (though that’s unofficially been beaten by combined-unit spreads at the Plaza), and even though Manhattan real estate is slouching toward dreariness, the biggest real estate story of the summer has been potential $100 million sales at 15 Central Park West, where buyers who closed on their new condos just this year are putting the places back on the market at massive markups.
But most brokers, even the ones who are listing the biggest units in the just-finished mega-condo, say nine-digit apartments are a fantasy.
Real Estate
Just Like The Times Building?
"Looks like the Pelli building would be the easiest to climb." ["Rogers, Pelli, KPF: Their Visions of A Port Authority Tower"]
The Round-Up: Friday
The city's economy slowed to a crawl, falling below the national growth rate after exceeding it for almost two years. [NY Times]
The new housing bill has something in it for everyone. [NY Times]
Residents might be rich, but East Hampton is broke. The town is set to end the year with a $12 million deficit. [NY Post]
Mayor Bloomberg said uncollected taxes on cigarettes sold at Indian reservations could spare straphangers at least one of the two planned fare increases. [NY Post]
Madison Square Garden officials named a construction manager to head the $500 million arena renovation, dealing another blow to Moynihan Station plans. read more »
The Afternoon Wrap: Thursday
The jewelers of Madison Avenue are taking advantage of the summer heat to relocate, throwing the unofficial retail diamond district between 61st to 65th streets into a tizzy. [Racked]
Here's your chance to vent about the most odiferous spots in the city. [Daily Intelligencer]
It looks like the crew of the upcoming season of Top Chef moved into their new digs in Williamsburg today. [Gothamist]
A British restaurant critic recalls a horrifying trip to Buddakan with Tim Zagat in his new memoir. Let's just say food was not the main item on the agenda. [Gawker]
Community Board 2 and SJP's neighbors have successfully vanquished a pesky SATC tour company from making their usual stop in front of her brownstone on Perry Street. read more »
NYPD To Lead World Trade Center Security
The NYPD will oversee security at the new World Trade Center, as the city and the Port Authority have reached an agreement on the structure of a security plan at the 16-acre site.
The agreement, announced today, leaves NYPD in charge of security at the vast majority of the site, a role the Port Authority Police Department currently has (the move has angered members of the Port Authority police). The Port Authority would control security at the PATH hub at the site, but the NYPD would have access to that space, according to a memorandum of understanding between the city and the Port Authority made public today. read more »
City Marshals Raid Harlem's Record Shack
A team of city marshals began removing merchandise from one of Harlem’s most iconic music stores, the Record Shack, before noon today, carrying out eviction orders delivered back in February.
The United House of Prayer for All People, the landlord of the 35-year-old de-facto Harlem landmark, gave Record Shack owner Sikhulu Shange 30 days to vacate the premises across from the official 125th Street landmark the Apollo Theater.
Mr. Shange then lost an appeal in civil court in March, and a judge ordered him to leave the premises “broom clean” by May 31. read more »
Rogers, Pelli, KPF: Their Visions Of A Port Authority Tower
The Port Authority at its board meeting this afternoon is taking a look at three possible designs for the planned tower over its bus terminal, with the firms of Richard Rogers, Cesar Pelli and Kohn Pedersen Fox all submitting plans.
Steve Roth's Vornado, in the hunt for an anchor tenant, is the developer for the tower, which would sit across the street from the Renzo Piano-designed New York Times building.
Pelli Clarke Pelli designed the Bloomberg tower on Lexington Avenue for Vornado; Mr. Rogers' firm designed the planned Tower 3 at the World Trade Center; and KPF was signed on for JPMorgan Chase's now-scuttled new investment banking headquarters (with a notable goiter for trading floors) downtown.
Images below. read more »
It's Complicated: Insurance Firm Spills Space Gobbled by Former UBS President, Cleary Gottlieb
Big news on multiple fronts thanks to a very complicated transaction just completed by CB Richard Ellis.
Arch Insurance Company, which CBRE just announced is consolidating its back-office operations in Jersey City, moving 300 employees to 107,000 square feet in Mack-Cali Realty Corp.'s Harborside Financial Center, is releasing space in midtown Manhattan and in the Financial District to an investment banking firm founded by the former head of UBS, and to Cleary Gottlieb, the white-shoe law firm.
Arch Insurance has subleased 30,000 square feet at 245 Park Avenue to Moelis & Co., former UBS Investment Bank president Kenneth Moelis' eponymous new firm that is, as CBRE broker Mark Ravesloot put it, "bursting at the seams" in its current space. read more »
Clock Tower to Plaza: Watch Us Get Russians (And Donatella!)
The Plaza and 15 Central Park West better watch out, because a new ultra-luxe condo is coming to town and its developers are already claiming they will have the edge with an emergent, but increasingly lucrative, segment of the residential market: the Russians.
Earlier this week, Lev Leviev's Africa Israel Investments announced that it had contracted Versace to spearhead the interior redesign of the Clock Tower Building and convert the former MetLife headquarters at 5 Madison Avenue into a 55-unit condo.
Versace, of course, ranks high on the list of residential amenities, but we couldn’t help but feel a brief pang of déjà vu. read more »
City Offering Plans Tumble; Sign of Slowing Residential Development
The number of offering plans approved by the state for fresh New York City condos and co-ops declined 4.5 percent from 2006 to 2007, according to The New York Sun this morning. The state attorney general's office, which must approve offering plans before sales can start, accepted 663 plans containing 25,271 units last year.
It's the first annual drop since 1999. But it may not be as momentous as it first seems.
Residential building permits in the city had dropped annually 46 percent in the first quarter of 2008, according to Census data. So a much bigger decline than 4.5 percent in offering plans accepted would have been expected; it didn't happen. read more »
The G Train Crusader
When Peter Eide moved to Clinton Hill, he had a "fantastical" idea.
The sculptor had spent 12 years moving around the borough after arriving from Philadelphia: Greenpoint, Williamsburg, back to Clinton Hill. But Mr. Eide, now 37, never strayed far from the G train, the only subway line in the city that doesn't travel through Manhattan. And he never stopped thinking of that idea he had: to connect his neighborhood G train stop, Fulton Street, to the Atlantic Avenue/Pacific Street transit hub, effectively linking the line to almost a dozen other routes.
The fantastical part? A 660-foot tunnel buried under Fort Greene. read more »
History Happens
The Round-Up: Thursday
The Afternoon Wrap: Wednesday
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