By Daniel Geiger 2/14/12 2:00pm

Construction Outlook 2012

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Construction Financing is Back But, As Developers Are Learning, Equity is Key

Plenty of statistics point to the need for new office construction in Manhattan, and the city’s aging building stock isn’t least among them.

Indeed, no meaningful addition to the city’s roughly 400 million square feet of commercial space has been added to the skyline in two decades, raising questions as to whether it could face a shortage in the coming years, a situation that has pressured rental spikes in the past. For now, however, amid what appears to be at least a hiccup in leasing during the last quarter of 2011 and the opening quarter of this year—not to mention lingering concerns about the health of the economy—only the most intrepid developers have gone into the ground with projects. Read More

By Robert Sammons 11/22/11 1:00pm

Commercial Stat of the Week

Times Square - November 2011

Stat of the Week: 10.7 Percent

The Times Square vacancy rate, as befitting this carnival-like submarket, has been on a bit of a roller coaster ride during the past few years. The figure, including direct and sublet availability, dipped to a record low 3.2 percent back in December 2006 then climbed to 15 percent by February 2010—before diving back to 8.8 percent in August of this year.

The latest figure shows it climbing to yet another peak, closing this past October at 10.7 percent. Read More

By Laura Kusisto 2/08/11 5:15pm

Features

The Top 20 Office Leases of 2010

“Banks started to feel a lot better, businesses started to stabilize,” said CB Richard Ellis’ Ken Meyerson, reflecting on 2010. “There was a risk of it starting to get better and better.”

Mr. Meyerson, who helped broker 2010′s largest lease for tenant Société Générale, was not alone in eyeing the recovery in the office-leasing market Read More

By Dana Rubinstein 5/17/10 4:37pm

Commercial Breaks

At Last! Proskauer Rose Signs at 11 Times Square

Eleven Times Square, the brand-new and entirely empty million-square-foot office building that has stood for months as the symbol of boom-time real estate hubris, is a symbol of excess no longer.

After months upon months of labored negotiations—and much semantic parsing by journalists covering them—law firm Proskauer Rose has finally signed a deal for 400,000 Read More

By Tom Acitelli 12/16/08 7:06pm

The 11 Times Square Effect: It Begins

From The Real Deal: "In November, the entire 1.1 million-square-foot building at 11 Times Square was officially added to CB Richard Ellis’ list of available space, helping to push net absorption to within a few thousand square feet of the losses in 2001, data from a Manhattan report released today by CBRE showed. Read More

By Dana Rubinstein 11/05/08 12:23am

O Lonely Office Tower! Will New Spaces Wait for Tenants?

There’s a mantra in commercial real estate that industry types repeat ad nauseam, as though the mere enunciation of the words will render them true: The Manhattan market is protected because it is on an island. The scarcity of space, and our general aversion to building new palm-shaped islands à la Dubai, is, in other Read More

By Tom Acitelli 10/22/08 8:17pm

11 Times Square’s Concrete Core All Set

SJP Properties announced Tuesday that the 600-foot-high core of its spec office tower at 11 Times Square had been topped out ahead of schedule. The tower, undertaken originally during much flusher economic times, is scheduled to be ready for tenants (whomever they may be) in 2010.

Full release below:

SJP Properties Announces Concrete Core Read More

By Dana Rubinstein 6/11/08 9:25pm

NBC on Office Hunt

NBC visited 7 World Trade Center on June 2, the most recent of more than one visit to Larry Silverstein’s gleaming downtown tower, whose top 10 floors are still available for lease. Sources say NBC was considering housing its new business operations center there.

“NBC has been back to 7 World Trade Center a number Read More