Back on the market.

It looks like Billy Maklowe and wife Julie will not be getting a new home for the holidays. At least not at 950 Fifth Avenue. While the New York Post reported that real estate scion (son of Harry) was in contract to buy a 12-room co-op there this November, it looks like the deal has fallen apart.

At least a deal has fallen apart. The paper trail shows that the sprawling duplex, which first hit the market in July with Stribling brokers Cindy Kurtin and Jessica Vertullo Maher, went into contract in October. Only to re-emerge, back on the market, at the very end of November. Whether or not the rebuffed or regretful potential buyer was Mr. Macklowe, who helms William Macklowe Company, remains a mystery. Ms. Kurtin gave The Observer a "no comment" when we reached her on the phone.

What happened to Billy Macklowe's rumored contract?

The apartment was then, and is now, asking $27.5 million. Mr. Macklowe, according to the Post, was in contract for something below that. Could the building's board have nixed what it felt to be too low of a price?

As we noted before, the grand apartment would seem an ideal home base for a business mogul. Mr. Macklowe has been making more and more of a name for himself and a $27 million apartment on Fifth Avenue is a way to announce that one has arrived.

Besides, sister Elizabeth Macklowe lives a hop, skip and a jump away at 740 Park (At least for now. Ms. Macklowe and estranged husband Kent Swig’s apartment is said to be in the midst of foreclosure proceedings.)

Maybe the place was too grand? There's fancy and then there's fancy. This duplex is fancy, with wood burning fireplaces galore, parquet de Versailles floors, 11-foot ceilings, a windowed eat-in kitchen and park views. The banister to the second floor? Hand-crafted wrought iron and gilt.

kvelsey@observer.com

A personal real estate investment.

What better way to pass these strange, disordered days after Hurricane Sandy than by inking the contract for a $27.5 million apartment on the Upper East Side? Harry Macklowe's son, budding real estate dynamo Billy Macklowe, certainly thought so, at least according to The New York Post. The Post reports that Mr. Macklowe signed an under-ask contract for a four-bedroom, 5.5-bath co-op apartment at 950 Fifth Avenue.

Mr. Macklowe, who first stepped out of his father's real estate shadow with a 636 Avenue of the Americas buy last November, has apparently decided it's time to acquire a new home more suited to his growing reputation in the real estate world. The duplex apartment spanning the fifth and sixth floors certainly (and perhaps more than) fits the bill. A sprawling prewar pad overlooking Central Park with parquet de Versailles floors, lots of wood-burning fireplaces (in case the next hurricane hits the Upper East Side) and plenty of built-ins and custom cabinetry, the co-op is listed with Stribling brokers Cindy Kurtin and Jessica Vertullo Maher.

But is it as nice as sis Elizabeth Macklowe's co-op at 740 Park? Ms. Macklowe and estranged husband Kent Swig's home was, last we heard, in the midst of foreclosure proceedings, but it's hard to beat a spread in the fanciest building in the city. Perhaps Mr. Macklowe's purchase was inspired by a little sibling rivalry. Or a brave show of support for the city as it grapples with rebuilding in the days ahead?

kvelsey@observer.com

The store, which opened another Manhattan store last October in Soho, will take about half of the roughly 15,000 square feet formerly occupied by the now-defunct bookstore chain Borders on the retail complex’s second floor.

Time Warner Center. (Courtesy Property Shark)

In a review of C. Wonder’s Soho location in recent months, The New York Times opined whether the company’s line of clothing and home decor items was an homage to Ms. Burch’s aesthetic or an attempt to steal her lunch. Like Ms. Burch, the company’s style exudes the uppercrust but is priced for the masses. Even C. Wonder’s logo bears a slight resemblance to Ms. Burch’s iconic medallion, which adorns ballet flats the world over.

Mr. and Ms. Burch divorced in 2006. Before Mr. Burch, Tory, whose good looks and blond hair also made her a popular face among high society in the city, was married to the real estate investor Billy Macklowe.

A spokeswoman for C. Wonder wouldn’t comment on the deal at Time Warner.

H&M is rumored to be in talks for the other half of the Borders space. A spokeswoman at the company wouldn’t comment.

“We’re doing very well here with ten stores from Soho to Harlem,” said the H&M spokeswoman, Nicole Christie. “We plan to continue our expansion. We are planning to open more stores for this year, and that’s not a secret.”

Borders declared bankruptcy last year, leaving vacant several large stores in Manhattan, many of which were quickly filled. As The Commercial Observer exclusively reported last year, the drug store chain Walgreens took a 20,000-square-foot space that the book store formerly occupied at 100 Broadway.

Dgeiger@observer.com

The Friars Club

Planned construction for a ventilation building on East 55^th Street, between Madison and Park avenues, will not only disrupt traffic (while also creating noise, dirt and dust), but potentially threaten the 100-year old building’s structural fortitude, said Friars Club lawyers.

“We are very concerned about the safety of the structure, and with being able to do business there,” said Sid Davidoff, partner at Davidoff, Malito and Hutcher LLP.

Mr. Davidoff said the club and the MTA have been in talks over how the construction will affect his client since July. The MTA claims the extension of the Long Island Railroad to Grand Central will shave 40 minutes off tens of thousands of straphangers’ commutes when all is said and done.

The National Realty Club, a 65-year old organization, has had to move before—its last venue, the Williams Club, shuttered two years ago and sent its alumni to dine at the Princeton Club. Membership chairman Adam Marsh said that they’ve already begun to research new options, but that the Friars Club will be hard to replace.

“People love it,” said Mr. Marsh. “Our main concern is the excessive noise. It will be hard to have the lunch that we do.”

The Club has only been at the Friars Club for two years. He added that many real estate owners are members of the Friars Club.

“Senior management kept us out of the loop about what was going on,” said Mr. Marsh. “So you can imagine our concern.”

The five-floor townhouse where real estate figures from Billy Macklowe to Darcy Stacom have helmed luncheons, is not only old and storied, it retains many of its original stained-glass windows, which were imported from Europe, and has many delicate fixtures, according to the lawyers.

Davidoff, Malito and Hutcher has retained an undisclosed engineering firm to study the structural viability of the English Renaissance-style townhouse. They will share data with the MTA, Mr. Davidoff said.

What’s the alternative to construction on the historic site? Anywhere else on the eastside that already has construction going on, said Mr. Davidoff. “They should consider those locations, and have much less impact on this thoroughfare,” he said of East 55^th Street.

Meanwhile, the MTA said that the construction is not especially threatening to the building. “As we always do, in all of our large construction projects, we will closely monitor the building to ensure that it is not damaged,” said Aaron Donovan, a spokesperson for the MTA.—Guelda Voien

A black box to everyone, that is, except Harry Macklowe. Barely two years after his fortune was nearly wiped out by an ill-fated $7 billion, seven-skyscraper spree, the litigious genius-just into his eighth decade, with long jowls and a beakish nose-is the surprising developer behind ambitious plans for a possible 70-story condo tower with three stories of luxury retail.

"Harry is a force of nature," said Woody Heller, a top broker with Studley. "He is a man in perpetual motion. He has one of the most creative minds I have ever known."

The golden shadow behind Mr. Macklowe is CIM Group, the Los Angeles-based owner of thousands of apartments nationwide, who bought the distressed site in early 2010 from Deutsche Bank in a $305 million all-cash buy.

"It is one of the most brilliant deals," said Mr. Heller, the sole broker on the sale, "that CIM or Macklowe will have done."

Both partners—who, according to a source with knowledge of the negotiations, have a money partner-developer relationship—disdain media attention and have said nothing about their plans. But, recently, an orange crane appeared in the northwest corner and workers began dismantling an adjoining townhouse on 57th Street. In March, CIM secured a modest $30 million loan, and on Friday The Observer reported that the developers had filed preliminary plans with the Department of Buildings.

That is to say: The stage is set, the characters are in place and the curtain is about to rise on the first act of a new development boom in New York City. And perhaps the biggest plot twist of all: Harry Macklowe is once again a star.

IN 2006, HARRY Macklowe had just completed a peculiar glass cube in front of his GM Building on Fifth Avenue. It would become Apple's new cathedral to high-tech consumerism and one of the world's most profitable retail locations. Banks were willing to lend him money for almost anything he wanted.

What he really wanted, though, was the Drake, a faded Gilded Age hotel set at the inflection point of the city's best retail, office and residential areas. In early 2007, he dropped $418 million and amassed $543 million in loans on buying the site, at 440 Park Avenue. Despite the staggering economics, the deal went smoothly.

"I think that he wanted that very badly and it was a time when financing was not a problem," said one person. "Deutsche Bank was pretty anxious to provide financing to him for anything he did."

Mr. Macklowe originally envisioned a hotel-condo tower, angled at the corner of Park Avenue and 57th Street, sources say, with a Nordstrom's. But like the luxury office tower he built at 510 Madison-whose gestational years as a Setai hotel explain the presence of a swimming pool-his vision for the Drake development has evolved.

He razed the former hotel to the ground, but before he could begin building, in November 2007, Macklowe Properties defaulted on the loan. Unlike many lenders this last recession, Deutsche Bank played hardball and sued its borrower in August 2008. Like a spurned lover, Mr. Macklowe responded in a legal brief that the lender "strung Macklowe Properties along until Deutsche Bank got what it wanted, then refused to honor its commitments-benefiting handsomely from its willfully dishonest, deceptive, bad faith and fraudulent conduct at Macklowe Properties' expense."

Mr. Macklowe's subsequent decline would mesmerize an industry. He started his career as a broker in the '60s and first amassed a fortune as a developer in the '80s, also garnering a reputation as a bare-knuckled player. He gained particular notoriety in 1985, when his development team, under cover of darkness, illegally tore down two Times Square residential buildings to make way for a new hotel. His fortunes dipped during the recession of the early '90s and he, along with his son Billy, built the company back up by 2003—most famously in 2007 by dropping $7 billion to buy seven skyscrapers from Blackstone, using only $50 million of their own money.

By February 2008, a $6.4 billion tab came due. Mr. Macklowe would lose almost everything-including the GM Building and his working relationship with son, who split with him in May 2008 and went on to form his own firm.

The elder Macklowe continued to search for a savior for the Drake site, but few developers in the city had cash to spend on a pricey development in that first bitterly cold winter of the recession. CIM appeared out of nowhere in January 2010 and struck a deal to buy the site that would keep Mr. Macklowe involved. It was the West Coast apartment owner's first New York City buy.

Mr. Heller, who arranged the deal, declined to comment on the specifics, but he said it was the most complex deal he has ever worked on. "They will be fabulously successful together."

CIM, meanwhile, has emerged seemingly from nowhere to become one of the most prolific buyers of troubled luxury property in the city, including William Beaver House, 11 Madison Avenue and the Trump Soho. Still, the West Coast newcomers have said almost nothing about the Drake site.

"It is inarguably the best development site in North America," said Eric Anton, a top broker at Eastern Consolidated who has not been involved in the site. "But they need to get going. Time kills all deals."

AN HOUR AFTER dawn on Monday morning, the 56th Street gate to the Drake site was wide open, and the rubble-strewn lot was eerily abandoned. The Observer strolled past the "Hard Hats Only" sign and felt the crunch of crushed red bricks and discarded soda bottles beneath our feet.

The only sound came from bricks raining down over the northwest corner, falling at the rate of one every 10 seconds from a townhouse being dismantled at 40 East 57th Street. Around the corner, on East 57th Street, workers were rolling out the guts of several townhouses in large gray garbage bins. Only 42 East 57th, a townhouse belonging to the family of Harrods owner Mohammed al-Fayed, which has thus far refused to sell, is still fully intact as is the townhouse at 48 East 57th (the developers can move ahead with the tower regardless of townhouse holdouts, a source said).

While the final stages of destruction are noisily under way, plans have been quietly drawn up to build a condo tower with three floors targeted at luxury retailers and perhaps a hotel in between-strikingly similar to what Mr. Macklowe wanted all along. The building could reach as high as 70 stories, and "it will have extraordinary views," one person said.

That's all anyone knows or will reveal. CIM flatly declined interview requests-as it has with all local media suitors (it has also, we should note, publicly downplayed Mr. Macklowe's role). Mr. Macklowe's assistant also greeted us icily. "Oh," she said, "he is not commenting on that."

With most of the details a secret, faith in the project rests squarely with Macklowe. "When I take Harry Macklowe on a property tour," Mr. Heller said, "I can't keep track of the number of concepts that pass through his mind. I can barely keep up with his eye movement."

Stirrings at the Drake site mark one of the earliest signs of a new development boom in Manhattan as a whole. Construction has started on Extell's 70-story hotel/condo development on 57th Street. Boston Properties is on the cusp of signing the major office lease it needs to move forward with a $1 billion office tower at Eighth Avenue and 55th Street. Durst is expected to break ground by the end of the year on a $350 million apartment tower just south of Herald Square. Most recently, Texas-based Hines Interests is rumored to be moving forward with construction of a glass needle for the MoMA at 53 West 53rd Street.

This is more than enough to rally an industry of optimists. "We've done more development sites in the last 10 or 12 months than we ever would have thought," said Eastern Consolidated CEO Peter Hauspurg, who said he's worked on brokering trades of hotel development sites especially. "It is remarkable in Manhattan. We're marketing a site on Bryant Park to build a 225,000-square-foot hotel and getting interest that is reminiscent of 2007."

"We are witnessing a renewed vigor for solid, well-located development sites from developers and investors alike," said Eastdil Secured's Douglas Harmon.

Nonetheless, an ultra-luxurious condo tower wedged amid glaring black office towers, with a huge retail space once intended for a highbrow British department store, seems like it belongs not in these chastened post-recession days but in ones 36 or so months back. The residential real estate market is recovering fitfully, and job growth remains sluggish amid the usual litany of industry concerns: interest rates, financing, the Obama administration.

Still, the curtain is up with Mr. Macklowe's moves at the Drake. And we've seen this play before.

"Distressed," Mr. Heller said, "is a word we're going to retire from the current lexicon in short order."

lkusisto@observer.com

Mr. Konsker, who has assisted with leasing at many of Mr. Macklowe's other buildings, including 140 East 45^th Street and 340 Madison Avenue, will be overseeing the assignment alongside longtime partner Matthew Astrachan, vice president Jonathan Tootell and associate Matthew Ginberg.

Partnering with ING Clarion Partners, Mr. Macklowe has already begun a repositioning of the 90,000-square-foot building that will include restoration of the façade's historical architecture. When the renovations are complete, Mr. Konsker said, the Flatiron District building will stand as one of the city's most vaunted boutique office offerings.

"Ownership is committed to making a substantial investment in 636 Avenue of the Americas," he said. "The building will offer a tremendous opportunity for tenants looking for above-standard ceiling heights and creative space as well as the prominence of 13,000-square-foot full floors in a modern office building."

jsederstrom@observer.com

And so it goes.

Macklowe, fils, is preparing for his first major purchase, according to The Journal, beating out 20 other bidders for 636 Avenue of the Americas. The price is $45.2 million, more than 50 percent higher the $29 million paid in 2004. This is in part because a limited supply of sales is driving up prices, The Journal reports, but Macklowe also said he sees an opportunity to upgrade the building and thus charge more in rent.

Macklowe told The Journal he is at work on at least seven other deals, many in line with his company's interest in distressed assets--an ironic approach, given that Deutsche Bank looked at the old Macklowe empire much the same way when it refused to negotiate with the family on its over-leveraged properties, and instead decided for foreclose on them.

mchaban@observer.com

Trade mag Hedge Fund Alert reports that Ms. Macklowe (profiled by Irina Aleksander in the Observer last year) is ditching the hedge fund business for fashion: "Specifically, she plans to start a fashion-related company and make seed investments in other fashion businesses."

Ms. Macklowe, wife of Billy Macklowe (profiled in the Observer last week) and daughter-in-law to Harry Macklowe, is known for her love of fashion. As she told Irina:

"You see all these amazing things on the runway, and very few people have the guts to wear them," Ms. Macklowe said. "Anyone can wear something that's safe, but you have to have a certain amount of courage to ... like one year I wore a Zac Posen dress to the CFDAs. It was all one piece of yarn in little pieces and I actually hit the worst-dressed list somewhere!"

The nose where he pressed his fingers was aquiline, like the beak of a barn owl. Below, his thin line of a mouth seemed hard-pressed to exhibit anything but irritation. For a man as fastidious as Mr. Macklowe, the ordeal of the past few years--an ordeal that laid low his and his father's business, an ordeal that made his family the poster child of the New York real estate bubble, an ordeal that still elicits invasive questions from intrusive reporters--must seem like medieval torture. Every negative blog post a turn of the rack.

You're just really seeking to move past all of that?

But all of that is over.

That's true. But it still informs our activities. ...

And that will show itself as I move forward.

William (Billy) Macklowe, 42, was born to a father whose immersion in New York real estate would come to dominate his life.

"My dad was less the throw-the-football-around kind of guy and more the let's-walk-building-sites-together," he told Men's Vogue in 2008.

An N.Y.U. grad with a degree in humanities, Mr. Macklowe joined the family firm in 1992. By then, his father, Harry, was an outsize figure in New York City, known as a mercurial, bare-knuckled genius. He started his career as a broker in the '60s, ultimately turning to development and amassing a fortune. He gained notoriety in 1985 when, under cover of night, his development team illegally tore down two Times Square SROs to make way for a new hotel. He was later fined $2 million. Then, like so many others, Harry Macklowe was felled by the real estate recession of the late '80s-early '90s.  

With Billy at his side, Harry quickly rebuilt his fortune. By 2003, he had won the industry's most prized trophy--the General Motors Building at the southeast corner of Central Park.

He solidified his reputation as a real estate virtuoso, the man who built Riverbank West and remade 340 Madison Avenue; the man who would go on to reopen the GM Building plaza to the street and help Apple build the now famous glass cube at the tower's base.

"It's not like Billy can easily replace his development savvy," said Michael Fascitelli, the president and CEO of Vornado, a real estate investment trust, and a longtime business associate of both men. "Harry was really one of a kind."

Yet if Harry was the creative genius, Billy seemed to pride himself on serving as his more practical foil.

"I've spent a considerable amount of time institutionalizing our business," he told Men's Vogue.

"I always thought he brought some stability to Harry's wildness," said a real estate executive who asked to remain anonymous so as not to endanger his relationship with the father and son.

Billy Macklowe also focused his energies on leasing and became a respected negotiator and dealmaker. Thomas Fuerth, an attorney who represented a Christian Scientist church in negotiations with Mr. Macklowe over the redevelopment of 340 Madison Avenue, remembers him as "very knowledgeable."

"He's a good negotiator," Mr. Fuerth said. "Sophisticated, understood the issues. I found it very enjoyable dealing with Billy."

Mitchell Konsker, a broker at Cushman & Wakefield who has helped Mr. Macklowe lease 140 East 45th Street and 340 Madison Avenue, among others, has been similarly impressed. "He is a dealmaker," Mr. Konsker said. "He makes the tenant feel at home. He gives the level of service you would expect from a first-class property. He treats the brokerage community fairly, but he is a very tough negotiator."

Nevertheless, there is an impressive amount of grousing about Mr. Macklowe in the clubby world of Big Real Estate, all of it off the record, lest brokers damage their standing with a family still regarded as powerful. If they're to be believed, Mr. Macklowe has the unfortunate habit of talking down to those he considers beneath him.

"Billy Macklowe is a guy who woke up on third base and thinks he hit a triple," said one broker. 

"He started on third base and he thinks he hit a home run," said another broker separately.

Said a third, "He was always a very arrogant young guy."

"He was really mean to people when they were on the top of the world, and unfortunately that's what people are remembering right now," said yet another leasing broker. "But at the end of the day, he's a really talented guy with a high aesthetic. He's got great taste."

When asked about his reputation for meanness, Mr. Macklowe said, "I've never heard that."

So tell me about cooking.

Why?

I don't know. I'm just trying to get you to open up a little bit. You're so tightly coiled.

No, I'm not tightly coiled at all. So much has been written about the past and all that, it's just not an area that I really wish to comment on.

The past that he was referring to began in 2007, when Mr. Macklowe and his father embarked on one of the most ill-fated real estate ventures of the modern era.

In 2007, Stephen Schwarzman's Blackstone Group bested Vornado Realty Trust and bought Sam Zell's Equity Office Properties Trust for $39 billion. The portfolio included some of Manhattan's finest cloudbusters, from the 39-story Plaza district tower at 540 Madison Avenue, catering to high-end boutique firms, to Worldwide Plaza at 825 Eighth Avenue, which housed high-powered tenants like Cravath, Swaine & Moore.

Blackstone, attuned to the roaring market, proceeded to sell off some of its new acquisitions. In a rapid-fire transaction that took place over 10 business days, Blackstone flipped seven midtown skyscrapers to the Macklowes for $7 billion. The family's footprint doubled to more than 10 million square feet. This being the era of overleverage, the family put only $50 million down, using the GM Building and personal assets as collateral, and financing the transaction with short-term loans from Deutsche Bank and Fortress Investment Group.

That wouldn't have been a problem if the real estate market had continued to soar, untethered by any relation to reality. But it didn't. The subprime mortgage crisis and subsequent collapse of Lehman Brothers spread fear in the New York real estate market. Transactions soon ground to a halt, property values fell off a cliff, credit markets withered. The Macklowes were unable to refinance that short-term debt, and they were forced to sell off the seven trophy towers and the GM Building at distressed prices. Billy Macklowe publicly spearheaded the dismantling of the empire. It was one of the most spectacular collapses the New York market had ever seen.

At the time, some people in the real estate community faulted Deutsche Bank for playing hardball with the Macklowes, rather than, like countless other banks, renegotiating and extending the loans until the economy improved.

"Yes, Deutsche Bank should have rolled with it," Billy Macklowe said. "They should have held out for the market to return."

But they didn't, and the fire sale--and recriminations--began. On May 27, 2008, an article in The Wall Street Journal, clearly written with the cooperation of the younger Macklowe, detailed the personal impact of the family's real estate woes, and seemed to place blame for the debacle squarely on his father's shoulders.

"William Macklowe blames his father for making numerous mistakes that led the company to the brink," read the article. "That deal proved to be fateful largely because the elder Mr. Macklowe, 70 years old, personally guaranteed a $1.2 billion loan from Fortress Investment Group.

"The elder Mr. Macklowe also resisted his son's efforts to quickly reduce their risk. 'The issue was my father seeing the victory of the deal as closing of the transaction. I saw victory as exiting the transaction,' William Macklowe says."

Two weeks later, Billy Macklowe was named chairman and CEO of his father's firm. Harry was bumped to chairman emeritus.

Understandably, Billy doesn't like to talk about that time. He doesn't like to discuss his role in the purchase of the seven-building portfolio. Nor does he like to discuss the Journal piece.

You've certainly sought to draw a distinction between yourself and your father, be it in the infamous Wall Street Journal article ...

You know what, just, I don't know what you're talking about.

No?

I think the infamous Wall Street Journal article of which you are speaking is something that happened several years ago, in the past. And I kind of sit here today very optimistic and expectant about what the future holds. And I think that how we will invest going forward will show what lessons we learned in the past. Everything that happens, lessons are learned from positive experiences, lessons are learned from negative experiences. And it's the ability to absorb that, and ultimately put that into your investment. ... That's how we seek to move forward.

Certainly, Mr. Macklowe, who was barely 40 when he began untangling his family empire, has endured something of a trial by fire. And he's widely credited with doing so with aplomb. "He handled it with poise and grace," Mr. Fascitelli of Vornado said. "He tried like hell to play that hand out the best he could."

"He's not a kid, Billy, he's an adult, but he certainly added a number of years of experience [during that period]," Mr. Fascitelli added. "He grew up quick."

On July 26, Billy Macklowe announced he was starting his own firm. It would be called William Macklowe Company.

To enter his new offices, on the 28th floor of Tower 56--the boutique skyscraper that his family sold in distress in the summer of 2008 for $158 million--is to emerge into a blindingly white space that bespeaks elegance and power.

Mr. Macklowe reigns over his new venture from a corner office in the rear, complete with panoramic views of the Upper East Side of Manhattan. On the bookshelf to the right of the door sits a dodo bird figurine. On the base of the figurine is the inscription, "Sam Zell 2009, Survival of the fittest."

Earlier this year, Mr. Zell's Equity Residential agreed to buy three Manhattan apartment towers from Macklowe Properties--the firm founded by Harry--for $475 million. Billy Macklowe, as chairman and CEO of that firm, negotiated the deal.

"I thought he was straight. I thought he was very pleasant. I thought he was very direct. I would like to think those are characteristic that would describe me," Mr. Zell told The Observer. "It was a terrific experience and I would do it again."

That morning, Mr. Macklowe, trim and compact, wore a gray suit, a lavender tie and a large, flat-faced IWC watch.

When asked about the relationship between his father's firm--still in existence--and his own, Mr. Macklowe said, "We have our respective economic interests and shared assets, but the old company has their business and we have ours."

Those shared properties include 400 Madison Avenue, 610 Broadway and other, smaller assets, which are "irrelevant." Mr. Macklowe said the development of the Drake Hotel site, on Park Avenue, between 56th and 57th streets, falls firmly in his father's court.

Now, Mr. Macklowe's firm is focused on four areas: what he calls "pure-play real estate," referring to the buying and selling and operating of properties; strategic lending opportunities; the trade in real estate securities; and real-estate-correlated investments. In contrast to his father, development does not seem a primary interest of Billy Macklowe's. Presumably like his father, resuscitating the family name is. (Harry Macklowe, through a spokesman, declined to comment for this article.)

Mr. Zell says he would happily work with Mr. Macklowe again. Fortress, one of the Macklowes' aforementioned short-term lenders, has expressed the same sentiment. Real estate insiders--even one of those grousing brokers--believe Billy Macklowe has the smarts, name recognition and real estate savvy to go far in the business. On his own.

"This situation wasn't easy to go through, both from a real estate standpoint and from a family standpoint," Mr. Fascitelli said. "The separation, breaking up and doing his own thing was probably invigorating for him."

The next upswing in real estate--and surely there will be one at some point in the next decade--should prove that theory out. 

As Mr. Zell put it, "All of us who are dealmakers live and die by the sword."

drubinstein@observer.com

And he's bringing 12 of his dad's former employees with him.

The younger Macklowe, who famously dissed his struggling dad in the pages of the Wall Street Journal in 2008, was named chairman and CEO of Harry's company, Macklowe Properties, in June of that year. But that move apparently didn't give him the independence he so craved.

Today, Billy's publicist at Rubenstein sent out the following release.

WILLIAM (BILLY) MACKLOWE OFFICIALLY LAUNCHES
HIS OWN COMPANY; ANNOUNCES SUCCESSFUL
REFINANCING OF 400 MADISON AVENUE AND 610 BROADWAY

New York, NY... Real estate developer and investor William S. (Billy) Macklowe has officially launched his new venture, William Macklowe Company (WMC).

Mr. Macklowe and a team of a dozen professionals that joined him from his former company, Macklowe Properties, have established WMC's headquarters on the entire 28th floor at 126 East 56th Street, where they will focus on acquisitions, strategic lending, real estate correlated investments and portfolio acquisitions, both in and outside of New York City. Additionally, WMC will continue management of its own portfolio and will pursue select third-party management assignments.

In an auspicious start to his new business, Mr. Macklowe also announced that he has successfully refinanced two portfolio properties - - the 22-story office building at 400 Madison
Avenue (with $66.5 million in refinancing from Metropolitan Life Insurance Company and Malkin Strategic Capital) and the landmark office/retail building at 610 Broadway in Soho (with a $43 million first mortgage from Eurohypo).
(more)
"We're excited about our business plan and the broad platform we've developed," stated the 42-year-old Macklowe, the company's Chief Executive Officer. "It allows us to be opportunistic in our investment strategy, continuing to use our strengths in both traditional office and residential deals and complex transactions where our broad and unique experience will add significant value."

"Not only will our buildings will be run and operated in the Macklowe tradition, which has long been recognized for exemplifying the highest management standards of our industry, but we are also looking forward to joining with institutional and joint venture partners in new acquisitions and development opportunities where the creative approaches, extensive building experience and diverse capabilities of our platform can help achieve a project's full potential."

WMC's nucleus of seasoned real estate specialists includes Chief Operating Officer Jason Grebin, Managing Director of Finance & Acquisitions Noah Leonard, Executive Vice President of Management Services Jim Migliore and Senior Vice President of Commercial Leasing Ken Dillon.

Respected for his broad real estate expertise, particularly in development, acquisitions, leasing and finance, the younger Mr. Macklowe joined his father, Harry, at Macklowe Properties in 1993. He assumed the presidency of that company in 2002 and took over as Chairman & CEO in 2008. He left Macklowe Properties in July of 2010 to launch WMC.
# # #

drubinstein@observer.com