Our pal Elevator View (one of the best photo tweeters/bloggers in town) shot us this photo of new construction fencing going up at 400 Park Avenue South, suggesting that Christian de Portzamparc’s long-delayed crystalline apartment building will finally rise there starting this year. Read More
In February 2007, Sam Zell told Jonathan Gray to buy a motorcycle.
Mr. Gray, head of the real estate division at private equity powerhouse Blackstone Group, had just closed on the purchase of Mr. Zell’s Equity Office Properties. Blackstone had announced its bid the previous November, just 13 months after Mr. Gray had stepped into his new role. He had spent his entire career at the firm, so his ascent was not so surprising, and had managed 10 deals worth a combined $32 billion so far, so the territory was not exactly new. All the same, Mr. Gray was 37 years old at the time, and he had embarked on the largest leveraged buyout in history.
On Jan. 18, less than a month before the deal was to close, Vornado Realty and two backers launched an unsolicited bid. It was $52 a share to Blackstone’s $48.50. Steve Roth, the bullish—in outlook, demeanor and build—chairman of the massive New York-based investment trust had arrived in the bookish Mr. Gray’s china shop, and it was now a scramble to fend him off. Read More
Gerry Spector, chief operating officer of the bankrupt Tribune Company, will step down at the end of the year, reports Tower Ticker.
His departure closely follows chief executive Randy Michaels’s resignation. Michaels has been criticized for fostering a frat-house corporate culture.
Spector, 63, was one of Zell’s first hires after he took over the Company in 2007. Read More
Sam Zell, owner of the Tribune Co., said yesterday that he plans to exit the company once it emerges from bankruptcy.
The announcement, made last night during an interview with CNBC, is not exactly a surprise. In the last two months, a series of scandals have led to the departures of chief innovation officer Read More
This morning at the New York Public Library during the Bloomberg Real Estate Briefing, Sam Zell sat for an interview with Bloomberg Television’s Betty Liu. While the Local 46 Union protested Mr. Zell’s use of non-union labor to finish an apartment building on West 23rd Street outside, Ms. Liu asked Mr. Zell about the Read More
Add metal lathers to the long list of people peeved at Sam Zell.
The successful developer and not-so-successful media mogul came to the New York Public Library today as part of the Bloomberg Real Estate Briefing, where he just finished giving a talk (more on that later from The Observer‘s Zeke Turner). Greeting him this Read More
The dominos keep falling in Sam Zell’s Tribune Tower.
Following the ouster of Tribune Co. CEO Randy Michaels — a former shock jock caught in accusations of his company’s late-night partying and sexist work environment — three executives have announced their imminent departures, The Chicago Tribune reports. Tribune Interactive President Marc Chase, Senior Vice President and Chief Read More
Bureaucratic Shuffle is a statue of a grossly porcine businessman in pinstripes and a boozy smile, six fleshy legs coiling below an engorged waist. Until early this week the statue was set prominently in the Nathan Hale Lobby of the Tribune Towers in Chicago, the building that houses Sam Zell’s media conglomerate. It was intended as Read More
Amid revelations of unprofessional office practices and the shameful departure of his hand-picked chief innovation officer, Tribune Co. CEO Randy Michaels will resign from his post and will leave the offices by the end of the week, the Chicago Tribune reports.
The New York Times reported yesterday that the board Read More
In the second high-level ousting of a Tribune Co. executive in a matter of days, CEO Randy Michaels will be advised by the board of directors of the company to issue his resignation, the New York Times reports.
The news comes soon after chief innovation officer Lee Abrams stepped down from his Read More
