Bound for the heavens. (432park.com)

The condo tower rising at 432 Park Avenue may be the most fascinating development project in the city. Sure, it can boast of being the tallest building rising in the city at the moment, to an eventual height of 1,397 feet (29 feet higher than the roof of 1 World Trade Center). It is also set to be the most expensive. But even more so, it is the secrecy of the building's developers, CIM Group and Harry Macklowe, that make the project all the more intriguing.

Very few details about the project have been released, and none of them publicly. Even renderings are clandestine. Which is why it is amazing that not one or even two but three different skycams have been whirring away at the site for the past year, showing it off in real-time, free for anyone to look—except that no one thought to.

"On September 26th, 2011 Macklowe Properties and CIM Group began excavating the construction site for 432 Park Avenue," a banner at 432parkavenue.com reads. "Simultaneously, we strategically installed three cameras overlooking the site so that our friends and supporters would be able to watch our extraordinary building take shape."

One almost gets the sense this site was intended just for friends and supporters, since the developers never bothered to publicize it.

A Berenholtz special, from September. (432park.com)

Internet data reveals that the cameras went live online sometime this summer at 432parkavenue.com, before which it was just a placeholder page. It features skycams overlooking the development from Park Avenue, 56th Street and 57th Street. There is also a rather stunning set of black and white slideshows by Richard Berenholtz, the architect-turned photographer well know for books like Manhattan Architecture and New York, New York. These sorts of photo-treatments have become de rigeur for developers, from Annie Liebovitz's Building the Times to the Port Authority's WTCprogress.com.

Currently, there are 16 slideshows on the site, mostly showing demolition of the row houses the developers had tried for years to buyout, and the slow setting of the foundation. The most recent gallery is from October, showing the building just above ground level. As the live cam shows, it has since progressed a few stories from there along the 57th Street side.

With One57 almost finished—the crane accident not withstanding—and 225 West 57th not yet ready to rise, all eyes will be one this tower, and these webcams, as the battle for skyline supremacy takes off.

Going up. (NYT)

So we are obsessed with the changing skyline along 57th Street, so we are always excited and intrigued by new renderings that pop up for it. The latest may also be the greatest, and while 432 Park Avenue is nothing new, the pic that ran in The Times today gives the clearest indication yet of just how big this spindly behemoth will be. At 1,397 feet, the ritzy condo building surpasses 1 World Trade Center, less its spire, by 29 feet, boasting by some measures the biggest building in New York status.

It will also be the most expensive, as The Times, which got its hands on the condo's offering plan, reveals:

The apartments will be large, and very expensive, with an 8,255-square-foot six-bedroom penthouse on the 95th floor being listed for $82.55 million, according to the condominium’s offering plan.

The Park Avenue tower’s 147 residential units, which have already undergone two price increases totaling 3 percent, are being listed, when counted together, for $2.43 billion, a record for a residential development, appraisers say.

That penthouse will not beat out the prices at rival One57, where at least one unit has already surpassed $90 million, nor the previous record holder, 15 Central Park and its $88 million manse-in-the-sky. Will it have the same ability to attract the world's billionaires as those buildings, or are we running out?

Another important question: Who gets to cut the ribbon?

Will it be Harry B. Macklowe, the legendary developer who has survived a roller-coaster career of highs and lows? Or the CIM Group, the Los Angeles-based real estate investment company that acquired the land, on the site of the old Drake Hotel, after Mr. Macklowe defaulted on his loan in 2007?

Both are listed in the tower’s offering plan. While some real estate executives in New York are embracing a familiar narrative for the famously risk-loving Mr. Macklowe for staging yet another comeback, just how involved he will be in the building’s development—and eventual profits—remains a mystery to outsiders.

How could something so insistent and ostentatious contain so many mysteries? Perhaps it is all part of the plot. How better to draw attention away from your skyline-topping rivals?

In establishments from the New York Times’s four-star-rated Del Posto to the Dream Hotel in Lower Manhattan, buttoned-up retail brokers will be wining and dining potential clients during a two-day orgy of after-hour soirees, dinners and suds-soaked meetings, all designed with the deal in mind.

Wheeling and dealing at Del Posto.

“It’s not like walking the floor in Vegas—you have to have appointments beforehand,” sniffed Faith Hope Consolo, a retail leasing executive with Prudential Douglas Elliman. “It’s a ton of networking, dinner and lunch and breakfast and cocktails with different landlords and retailers.”

The event is still the second-largest retail event in the country and draws top executives from most of the world’s major retailers, not to mention almost all of the city’s major retail players. With so many key people congregated in one place (at the New York Hilton), brokers work overtime to try to maximize the chance to arrange deals or plant seeds for potential transactions in the future.

The opportunity is of special importance to brokers like Richard Hodos, an executive at the real estate services company CBRE.  Mr. Hodos, a seasoned broker who has handled a number of major leasing deals in the city, is in the process of marketing one of the city’s marquee retail projects, roughly 90,000 square feet of stores that will be built at the base of a proposed 70-story tower that the CIM Group is planning to develop on the former site of the Drake Hotel at 57th Street and Park Avenue.

For Mr. Hodos, the show allows him to round up decision-making executives from major retailers who could be potential takers of the space and actually bring them to the site and show them the plans for the soaring tower, not to mention wine and dine them.

“For me, it’s a good way to connect retailers with landlords who have product that meets the retailer’s strategic needs,” Mr. Hodos wrote in an email. “It’s also a great way to introduce retailers to property in New York that we exclusively represent. Since most retailers I schedule ICSC meetings with are from ‘out-of-town,’ it is often one of the only opportunities during the year to physically get them here to actually see our properties.”

The event takes place on Monday and Tuesday, a much quicker schedule than in Las Vegas, which stretches a week and is widely described as a bonanza of networking and dealmaking that draws movers and shakers from all walks of the retail business.  Because the New York ICSC is shorter, many brokers work overtime to maximize the opportunity.

Mr. Hodos said that his week will begin on Sunday entertaining clients with a dinner at the Iroquois Hotel. On Monday, he is taking clients to Del Posto.

To maximize time at the show, where guests congregate on the Hilton’s ballroom floor and also have meetings in hotel rooms and private suites booked upstairs, Ariel Schuster, an executive at Robert K. Futterman, a retail leasing and sales brokerage based in the city, said he pushes space tours with clients to Wednesday and Thursday.

“Many retail executives stay for the week so after the show they can continue to meet with brokers and landlords,” Mr. Schuster explained.

After hours he too takes the time to entertain clients. Every year, Mr. Schuster says he hosts a private dinner with the retailers and landlords he works closely with. On Monday, he says he’ll be doing the event at A Voce, a high-end restaurant at the Time Warner Center. While the conversation during an event as important as ICSC never strays too far from business, the point of the dinner is to also have fun.

“After working with these people for years, you’re also friends and we all have a great time getting together,” Mr. Schuster said.

Though the ICSC show features numerous speaking panels throughout the day, most brokers pass on the scheduled program to network and meet with clients. Mr. Schuster said that he has about 25 meetings scheduled heading into the conference, some of which are dedicated to pitching tenants he otherwise would have trouble connecting with, such as out-of-town retailers and those from overseas looking to come to the U.S.

For him, the conference goes beyond just spurring new business and reconnecting with those he already works with. Mr. Schuster said that he uses ICSC as a convenient place to also cinch up deals that have already been in the works.

“Everybody is there so you can finally get people face to face,” Mr. Schuster said, explaining that he grabs landlords and tenants while they’re on hand and gets them together to get transactions he has been working on, or that have stalled, over the goal line.

“If you’ve been negotiating a deal, you’re trading paper, having conference calls,” Mr. Schuster said. “But when you get people together all of a sudden you can get all the issues out of the way and get the deal done. People are more focused, they’re here for two days to do deals, it’s intense. Vegas is the Super Bowl but this is close to it.”

For some, the event is not always so structured.

“Every year I usually unexpectedly bump into people on the floor of the conference that inevitably leads to something,” Jeffrey Roseman, a top retail broker from Newmark Knight Frank, wrote in an email.

Chance encounters may be particularly helpful to Mr. Roseman. Among the projects that Mr. Roseman is working on is the marketing of space at the Limelight on 21st Street and Avenue of the Americas, a location that has been unsuccessful as a boutique mall with over a dozen tenants and that Mr. Roseman is aiming to lease to one or two tenants.

dgeiger@observer.com

Now, for the first time, the taciturn Mr. Macklowe has spoken publically, if still vaguely, about his plans, talking them up at a Massey Knakal-sponsored conference on Friday, according to Bloomberg:

"I'm pleased to tell you we're moving forward on a piece of land that we own free and clear," Macklowe said yesterday. The development, planned for the site at Park and East 56th Street, "will be a capstone. It will be a monumental building and will be as much of an icon as the Apple cube," in front of the General Motors Building, he said.

Humunah humanah humanah!

mchaban [at] observer.com | @mc_nyo

Insiders told The Observer a few weeks ago that Mr. Macklowe and his money-partner, the CIM Group, planned a 70-story residential development, with a three story retail component on the ground-floor, and possibly a hotel in between. The Wall Street Journal confirms those plans today and says the developers have hired architect Rafael Viñoly to design the tower. 

The Uruguayan-born architect has designed a number of competent institutional buildings, including the Brooklyn Children's Museum, Bronx Housing Court and the odd police precinct. He also designed the Jazz at Lincoln Center building. 

Mr. Viñoly is arguably a disappointing choice to design a soaring tower at the inflection point of one of the city's best retail, office and residential areas. But it's worth remembering that for all of the hubub about Mr. Macklowe's glass cube on Fifth or the Club Med of office towers, 510 Madison, neither were designed by world-renowned architects.  

A couple of weeks ago, we wrote that Mr. Macklowe plans to make a comeback, with the 440 Park Avenue site as his stage. Apparently pretty thrilled to be back in the game, he's showing the model to guests in his office in the GM Building, according to The Journal. Ah, to be a fly on that wall.  

lkusisto@observer.com 

A team led by the California-based CIM Group has filed an application with the Department of Buildings to begin construction on the site, at Park Avenue and 57th Street where the Drake Hotel once was, according to public records. Associates of Harry Macklowe, which purchased the site for $418 million in 2006, are listed on the application. 

The plans submitted to the city call for a mere five-story office tower, but that is a possible tactic to get the development moving before plans are finalized or financing is secured. Industry insiders told The Observer that a 70-story residential tower is planned, with as much as three stories of luxury retail on the bottom, but that could not be confirmed. Nordstrom's, which was previously slated to take the retail space, is reportedly still considering it. 

The Drake Hotel site has been fallow ever since Mr. Macklowe demolished the Gilded Age reminder. Deutsche Bank sued Mr. Macklowe over an unpaid $30 million debt on the site in August 2008. Los Angeles-based CIM purchased the site from Deutsche Bank for $305.4 million in January 2010. They have also been quietly assembling or trying to assemble several townhouses around the site, in preparation for development. Mr. Macklowe is still said to be involved in the planning, with little or no financial stake, according to people familiar with the deal, but not directly involved. 

"It is inarguably the best development site in North America," Eric Anton of Eastern Consolidated told The Observer this week (he is not involved in the development plans). But, he added: "They need to get going. Time kills all deals." 

A CIM spokesman declined yesterday to comment, saying the company does not engage in market speculation. Multiple voicemails to Harry Macklowe and his associates were not returned over the last week. Earlier, CIM secured a $30 million mortgage for the site, The Observer reported. 

lkusisto@observer.com 

With financing for development sites still virtually frozen, CIM Group has received a $30 million mortgage from Pacific Northwestern Bank on the former home of the Gilded Age hotel, according to public records.

As The Observer reported in February, the spot at Park Avenue and 57th Street is likely the only existing development site with a prime midtown location. The Wall Street Journal once dubbed it "the world's most valuable rubble-strewn lot."

The battle for control of the retail, office or hotel site has been long and complex. Here are the Cliff Notes: Harry and Billy Macklowe bought the hotel for $418 million, plus $543 million in loans, in 2006, and subsequently demolished it over preservationists' cries. But like so many of their prized assets, it was ultimately doomed, and the Macklowes defaulted on the development loan in 2008.

California-based private-equity firm CIM was poised to swoop in and help Billy Macklowe save the site from lenders this January, according to The Journal. Instead, CIM bought the building from Mr. Macklowe's newly formed, eponymous firm for $305.4 million in the same month, according to public records. A William Macklowe Company spokesman confirmed the firm has no involvement any longer.

Sources said CIM still plans to build on the cluster of properties at 434 Park Avenue, as well as 38, 40, 44 and 50 East 57th Street. The company did not respond to requests for comment.

A quiet, but increasingly powerful player on the Manhattan development scene, CIM has also helped pay off loans held by iStar on the Beaver House site at 15 William Street.

IN ANOTHER SIGN that dark clouds over the city's real estate finance market are lifting, one of the city's largest apartment buildings, Kent Swig's former Sheffield condo tower, has received a $125 million new mortgage, according to public records.

The Fortress Investment Group bought the now 597-unit tower at 322 West 57th Street between Eighth and Ninth avenues from Mr. Swig, who was in the midst of a contentious conversion of the onetime rental tower. Sales were frozen during the battle for ownership, as Mr. Swig faced a $28 million lawsuit. Since Fortress took over, dozens of units have sold for as much as $7 million. Fortress' new mortgage is one of the year's dozen largest loans so far.

UPDATE: Thanks to renovations, the number of units in the Sheffield has shrunk from 845 to 597. 

lkusisto@observer.com