Related Companies | Observer

By Daniel Geiger 12/07/11 2:00pm

The White Whale of West 57th Street: Nordstrom appears poised for NYC

It’s the great white whale of Manhattan retail.

Aside from Walmart, Nordstrom is the store every retail broker in the city dreams of harpooning and reeling into a new home. One prominent broker familiar with the store, the amount of space it needs and the rents it would probably be willing to pay estimates that the commission for handling its lease would be around $10 million.

But like a leviathan lurking beneath the waves, the department store has offered only fleeting glimpses around the city, most notably at several development sites and a few existing assets with the capacity to accommodate its sprawling footprint.

The scuttlebutt nowadays: Nordstrom is contemplating one of two leases, one at the West Side rail yards with the Related Companies or another at the base of Extell Development’s soaring new residential tower now rising at 157 West 57th Street. Read More

By Daniel Edward Rosen 12/07/11 1:00pm

Whale Watch

Wooing Walmart: NYC brokers still have eyes for elusive retailer

The weekly phone calls. The dinner invites. The gifts.

When representatives from Walmart, the nation’s largest retailer, waltz into the New York Hilton for this year’s two-day International Council of Shopping Centers conference, many of the city’s most intrepid retail brokers will be close behind them, perhaps even plying those officials with compliments, dinner invitations and business opportunities. Read More

By Matt Chaban 10/26/11 10:34am

Checking in

The two towers, back from the dead. (Pay a Visit)

There Will Be a Clocktower Hotel After All, With Ian Schrager Ringing the Bell

The Observer is not sure which is worse: a Tommy Hilfiger-themed hotel or just another blasé Marriott. The fashion designer had planned to tranform the Madison Square icon into a red-white-and-blue boutique hotel before he backed out. A plan to turn the landmark into condos already failed, but the owners have found a new buyer who still wants a hotel overlooking Shake Shack. Read More

By Matt Chaban 10/11/11 11:00pm

Greensward

Park Life: The East Side’s Landless Gentry Fight for Every Scrap of Open Space

Think of the perfect Saturday on the East Side. Brunch with your friends and the kids at, say, Fig & Olive, Artisinal or—the mayor’s favorite—Viand. Maybe a stroll along Madison for a little shopping and errands, and then off to Central Park to let the little ones wear themselves out before a nap. Or maybe it’s the other way around, soccer and softball in the park, a little tennis with friends or just some sunning on one of the lawns, then a late lunch.

Living East of Eden sure can be nice, but just like Adam and Eve, it always seems like there is more outside the garden gates.

Not satisfied with their proximity to one of the loveliest parks in the world, East Siders have been lobbying for decades for more leisure land, particularly along the river. They look jealously on at their West Side brethren, with Riveside Park and Hudson River Park—and even the green shoots along the Brooklyn and Queens waterfront. Thanks to rampant development, from Robert Moses’ FDR Drive up through the Bloomberg Building on 59th and Lexington, the East Side has grown more crowded every day, and yet access to the water, a mere mile away, has been all but impossible. Read More

Across the Wire