GM Building | Observer

By Matt Chaban 10/07/11 5:38pm

Two American corporate giants. (MacRumors)

Hip to Be Square: How Harry Macklowe and Steve Jobs Built the Iconic Apple Cube

It is a POPS done right.

The Apple Cube on Fifth Avenue managed to transform a windswept plaza at one of the busiest intersections in Manhattan into a destination known the world over—one that became a shrine to its creator when Steve Jobs passed away earlier this week. The Journal‘s Eliot Brown (an Observer alum!) talked with reclusive developer Harry Macklowe about how the cube came to be. Like all things Apple, it wasn’t his idea but Jobs’. Read More

By Tom Acitelli 7/05/11 2:35pm

The Lab

Advantage, Landlords: Bell Tolls for Prospective Tenants in Midtown Trophies

For a while there, the cost of Class A office space in New York was tumbling amid thousands of layoffs, the Great Recession, cats and dogs living together, etc. Landlords were having to concede incentives like free rent and comped upgrades; and tenants were jumping at deals in addresses that in frothier times had higher barriers of entry.

That appears to have changed. Read More

By Dana Rubinstein 11/17/09 9:21pm

Gilding the Lobby Lily

The frugality fad is fading fast.

Bidders are dropping multimillions on Warhols at Sotheby’s; Goldman Sachs wives are preparing holiday shopping extravaganzas in anticipation of record bonuses; and in the realm of commercial real estate, tenants are spending more than $100 a square foot on office space (in which to hang their newly acquired Read More

By Reid Pillifant 11/02/09 4:40pm

G.M. Building Won’t Be G.M. Building Anymore, Maybe

The G.M. Building is getting a new name. Or it might be, as Dana Rubinstein reports this morning.

A month after he announced that the beleaguered automaker would stay in its namesake building, Boston Properties chair Mort Zuckerman said last week that his company had recaptured the right to re-name the iconic building as Read More

By Staff 11/02/09 12:12pm

GM Building Naming Rights Officially Up for Grabs

The naming rights for the GM Building, one of the rarest opportunities in New York real estate, are officially in play.

During last week’s third-quarter investors call, Boston Properties president Douglas Linde included in his prepared remarks the following: ”We can report that we were able to retain General Motors in 114,000 square feet for 10 years at Read More

By Dana Rubinstein 9/28/09 10:28pm

GM Picks GM Building

General Motors’ torturous search for a new home in New York City has finally reached an end. And, oh, what an anticlimactic end it is.

General Motors has signed a 114,300-square-foot, 10-year lease renewal at, you guessed it, Boston Properties’ General Motors Building, at 767 Fifth Avenue, the white-marble shaft that has borne its name Read More

By Dana Rubinstein 8/25/09 8:06pm

The 10 Most Expensive Buildings, Revisited

In April 2007, during those blindered days of economic bluster, The Observer published an article naming New York’s 10 most expensive towers, according to prominent real estate professionals. They agreed on the most valuable single building: the GM Building. That rocket of marble and black glass, considered then and now the most coveted skyscraper Read More

By Dana Rubinstein 7/22/09 6:35pm

GM Officially Kills Lease at Citigroup Center

Thank God for bankruptcy! By declaring Chapter 11, General Motors has been allowed to officially reject its 120,000-square-foot lease at the sublimely modernist 601 Lexington Avenue (better, if formerly, known as the Citigroup Center).

Mort Zuckerman‘s Boston Properties, which owns the stunning rascacielos, revealed the news in its second quarter earnings report:

On Read More

By Dana Rubinstein 7/07/09 9:10pm

Screech! GM May Stay Put at GM Building, Nix New York Office Move to 601 Lex

You know what they say about the best-laid schemes o’ mice and men? It turns out the benighted General Motors Corporation may keep its New York headquarters at the eponymous GM Building after all.

GM is in negotiations with Mort Zuckerman and Ed Linde’s Boston Properties to renew its lease at the GM Building at Read More

By Dana Rubinstein 2/24/09 10:49pm

Retail Power Brokering, 2009

Last month, Robert Futterman, one of the most prominent and powerful names in Manhattan retail, sent out a press release touting his venerable eponymous brokerage’s latest blockbuster deal: “a 525-square-foot lease with Joe – The Art of Coffee at 514 Columbus Avenue.”

If square footage isn’t your vernacular, that’s about the Read More

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Hip to Be Square: How Harry Macklowe and Steve Jobs Built the Iconic Apple Cube

Advantage, Landlords: Bell Tolls for Prospective Tenants in Midtown Trophies

Gilding the Lobby Lily

G.M. Building Won’t Be G.M. Building Anymore, Maybe

GM Building Naming Rights Officially Up for Grabs

GM Picks GM Building

The 10 Most Expensive Buildings, Revisited

GM Officially Kills Lease at Citigroup Center

Screech! GM May Stay Put at GM Building, Nix New York Office Move to 601 Lex

Retail Power Brokering, 2009

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