Dana Rubinstein

The trading floor at the new Bank of America tower at One Bryant Park got partially busy on Monday, three days after the building’s developer secured a temporary certificate of occupancy for Manhattan’s newest trophy tower.  read more »

Where’s Harry Macklowe?

Has the once mighty real estate titan taken a wind-powered voyage on his sailboat, Unfurled, to some mysterious locale still untouched by rumors of his catastrophic fall from the acme of Manhattan real estate?  read more »

There are perks, and then there are perks.

Gotham’s City, the collection of three Gotham Organization luxury buildings in Midtown, has launched a rooftop concert series, complete with a real Empire State Building backdrop, as an added perk for tenants willing to fork over at least $3,000 monthly for what the residential giant dubbed an “alcove.”  read more »

Forget about garbage disposals and dishwashers. This is a perk!

Gotham’s City, Gotham Organization's collection of three luxury buildings in Midtown, has launched a rooftop concert series, complete with a real, Empire State Building backdrop, as an added perk for tenants willing to fork over $3,000 for what the real estate giant dubbed an “alcove.”  read more »

$660 million, please.

The owner of the Empire State Building has a tall order -- a $660 million loan to renovate New York City's tallest building, according to a Bloomberg News article published in today's Boston Globe.

The idea, according to developer Peter Malkin, is to make the 102-story Art Deco masterpiece, long home to small tenants, more attractive to larger (and presumably more lucrative) ones.  read more »

High-octane law firm Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison is in negotiations with Vornado Realty Trust to occupy space in the skyscraper that the real estate giant plans to build on top of the Port Authority Bus Terminal.

A source close to the negotiations said that the law firm, which now occupies 400,000 square feet at 1285 Avenue of the Americas, wants to take 500,000 square feet in the tower, which isn't expected to be complete until 2012.

More on this in Wednesday's paper.

Check out this eye-popping new rendering of the Walentas family's $600 million Clinton Park development planned for Manhattan's far West Side, on 11th Avenue, between 53rd and 54th streets.

The Walentas family released this new rendering of the mixed-use development, complete with this sinuous spine of gardened terraces, a car dealership on the ground floor, and about 900 rental apartments on top.  read more »

It was a bright new day at One Bryant Park this morning, when Bank of America employees showed up for their first day of work at the crystalline skyscraper on Sixth Avenue, between 42nd and 43rd streets.

The new 54-story skyscraper, also known as the Bank of America tower, unofficially opened for business, after developers secured a temporary certificate of occupancy at 5 p.m. on Friday.  read more »

The United Nations will break ground today on a three-story, purposefully ugly building that will serve as temporary space for the international body while its East River headquarters gets refurbished, according to an article today in Canada's Financial Post.

To make sure the temporary building on North Lawn doesn't become a permanent part of the U.N.'s landscape, the United Nations included its demolition in the project's $1.9 billion budget and, in a rather unorthodox move, intentionally designed it as an eyesore, according to Michael Adlerstein, the project's head architect.  read more »

Owners of One Hanson Place appear to have lowered by 30 percent the price of the landmarked banking hall at the bottom of Brooklyn's tallest and most glamourous building.  read more »

Sam Zell--Tribune owner, real estate mogul, hog-lover (and by hog, we mean motorcycle)--says commercial real estate, especially in dense urban cities like Manhattan, will weather this financial storm just fine, thanks to renewed investment in mortgage-backed securities and foreign buyers.

``After they get through bashing George Bush, the very next question is, `Where's my visa?''' Mr. Zell told Bloomberg News during an interview in New York City. ``There is not another environment in the world that matches the U.S. in terms of opportunity, creativity, acceptance of change, acceptance of failure."

Mr. Zell was less bullish, however, about those repositories of the hellish known as the suburbs.  read more »

Fifteen minutes ago was the deadline for developers to bid on one of Manhattan's prime trophy properties -- 1301 Avenue of the Americas, also known as the Credit Lyonnais Building, at the corner of 52nd Street.

The cloud-buster is one of the seven so-called "Equity Portfolio" properties that beleaguered mogul Harry Macklowe bought last year for $7 billion (in those bubbly days, he only had to put down $50 million of his own money).  read more »

In yet another indicator that the commercial real estate market is wilting -- to use what is likely a euphemism -- an analyst downgraded CB Richard Ellis shares yesteday from "buy" to "hold."

"We do not expect that the commercial real estate market can turn around until the late 2009 to 2010 timeframe," Patrick Burton, a Citi Investment Research analyst, wrote to a client, according to the Associated Press, via CNN.com.

Ouch.  read more »

Location: About six months ago you released an Ian McKellen-narrated video of what downtown Brooklyn would look like in five years. Given the current economic turmoil, would you release the same video today?

Mr. Chan: Absolutely.

The video cited $9.5 billion in private investment—that included Atlantic Yards?

That includes Atlantic Yards.

So you still think Atlantic Yards will happen?

Yeah, I think it is in the process of happening.

All 16 towers and arena?

The Atlantic Yards was always a project that was conceived as taking a few economic cycles to fully realize itself.

 read more »

Developers now have an extra month to prepare their bids for one of the last soft sites in Times Square—303 West 42nd Street.

Thomas Simmonds, the project manager of the site, said the sellers pushed the deadline back from April 30 to May 30 “unofficially,” thanks to the enormous interest in the space.  read more »

Hard Rock, of Hard Rock Cafe fame, and SL Green Reality Corp. have together submitted a bid to run the Aqueduct Racetrack, the Queens running ground that has, over the years, been run into the ground.

Rock ’n’ roll and horse racing: it’s an unlikely marriage that just might work.  read more »

Letters to the editor in The Economist may run under the anachronistic and patriarchal greeting “Sir,” but The Economist is no media dinosaur. Exhibit A: Its New York presence, like Alvy Singer’s universe, is expanding. The Economist, sir, is on the commercial real estate market.  read more »

There’s really no need to travel to other First World countries at all anymore—unless, of course, you’re interested in architecture and landscape and other such trifles.

Hakkasan, the restaurant Time Out London called “a hidden Narnia of Oriental other-worldliness,” is scouting Manhattan locations for its first New World eatery.  read more »

Zipcar, the car-sharing service that allows customers to rent wheels by the hour with outlandish names like Melgaard (a Mazda 3) and Scrod (a Volvo S40), is expanding, parking problems notwithstanding.

Zipcar, which recently merged with Flexcar and says it's the "world's largest car sharing and car club provider," signed a five-year for 7,500 square feet at 1265 Broadway, also home to Oakwood Worldwide.

That's a 500 percent jump in size from its previous 1,500-square-foot space at 120 West 24th Street.

Congrats, Zipcar! Now, if you would only lower your prices, so we could afford to use you again.  read more »

Beer nerds, rejoice! Crown Heights can now count itself among the select group of neighborhoods to have a true, brew beer garden.

As reported in the Gothamist, Franklin Park, at 618 St. John's Place, officially opened its doors on Friday, tapping kegs of Coney Island Lager, Rare Vos Amber Ale, Hoegaarden, Green Flash IPA, Schneider Weisse, Raddelburger, Six Point Righteous, Blue Point Toasted Lager, Original Sin, Jever, O'hara Irish Stout and Stone Pale Ale.  read more »

The Time Warner Center, that stylish mall at Columbus Circle, has been dubbed the "2008 Office Building of the Year" by the Mid-Atlantic Conference of Building Owners and Managers Association.

The 2.8 million-square-foot Center won in the exclusive 1 million-square-feet-and-over category, after an earlier qualifying win in a statewide competition.

The Center, completed by Stephen Ross' Related Companies in 2004, has 80 floors of residential and retail (think Whole Foods and Sephora), super chichi restaurants (think Per Se and Masa), and lots of fancy offices where famous people work (think Anderson Cooper).

BOMA determined the winner based on a scale of 80 points, for categories ranging from "energy and environmental management" to "tenant relations."

Now, the Center has the chance to compete in that buildings competition to beat all buildings competitions: the national BOMA awards.

Here's the release:  read more »

You know things are slow in the commercial real estate world when the Moinian Group sends out a press release touting a mere 52,115 square feet in leases. And, they're renewals!

Where oh where are the big deals?

Alas, the days are gone when news of little deals ended up in the trashbin.

And so, without further ado, the release:  read more »

News Corp. has leased a huge chunk of space at 1185 Avenue of the Americas, right next to its headquarters. Perhaps to make room for the arrival of the Wall Street Journal in Midtown?

Since News Corp. Chairman Rupert Murdoch purchased The Journal in December, he has reportedly discussed moving The Journal’s newsroom from the World Financial Center to Midtown by 2009.  read more »

Newsweek may be reconsidering its long-planned move from midtown Manhattan to 100 Church Street, following months of negotiations.

“Newsweek did go out and look at some alternative stuff,” according to a well-placed source. “They still are focused on 100 Church, but the market has shifted a bit, and they still wanted to see what else is out there.”  read more »

Looks like it’s haggle-time in midtown commercial real estate.

Class A office space has become, believe it or not, more negotiable, with tenants finagling more rent-free months and bigger allowances to improve their spaces, according to a new analysis by Jones Lang LaSalle.  read more »

The apocalyptically minded once foretold a Manhattan lined with virtually nothing but banks. Chase banks. Citibanks. Astoria Federal Savings. That their dire predictions only came partially true (rather than entirely true) we can attribute, at least partly, to the credit crisis.

But it isn’t mom-and-pops that are swooping in to fill the vacuum.  read more »

Developer Harry Macklowe’s descent from the pinnacle of Manhattan real estate will continue apace April 30, the day bids are due for several of the seven Manhattan towers he bought so spectacularly in February 2007.

Those readying bids for the cloud-busters include many of the same developers who circled Mr.  read more »

Some of us get our positive reinforcement from the Oscar committee. Others from the Pulitzer committee. And, in New York, where real estate brokers get about as much respect as, say, newspaper reporters, some of us get it from the Real Estate Board of New York.

On Tuesday evening, after The Observer went to press, REBNY presented its annual Most Ingenious Deal of the Year Awards at the 101 Club on Park Avenue. The Ingenies are, as one real estate insider put it, “something you’ll refer to probably for your entire career.”  read more »

The unabashedly gorgeous ground floor of Brooklyn’s tallest building, One Hanson Place, remains empty, despite a more than two-year search for a retail tenant, prompting its owners to ditch brokers mid-stream and start from scratch.  read more »

AOL, the user-friendly portal popular with baby boomers and their parents, officially opened its new corporate headquarters in New York City today.

Three hundred employees from AOL's Corporate and Programming branch, formerly based in Virginia, are moving today into the 105-year-old, Daniel Burnham-designed building at 770 Broadway, which once housed the Wanamaker Department Store. Mr. Burnham also designed the Flatiron Building.  read more »

If you needed any reminder that the fog of litigation clouding the allegedly “fraudulent” sale of the GM Building to Harry Macklowe in 2003 involves actual people, rife with human intrigue, here’s a reminder from an affidavit signed by real estate developer and investor Leslie Dick.

We know it's confusing; but first, some background: Mr. Dick alleges that celebrity financier George Soros rigged bidding so that the trophy building would end up in Mr. Macklowe's hands. We'll get into the nitty gritty of that some other time. The real point of this post is to share the following juicy tidbit from the affidavit: Mr. Dick claims that, after he wrote Mr. Soros in November 2003 expressing his concern about the sale, Mr. Soros spied on him.  read more »

Get your mind out of the gutter, folks. The beginning of steel erection at 11 Times Square — the glass tower rising opposite The New York Times building — means that the first speculative midtown development in years is finally rising.

The 7,000 tons of steel will be used to reinforce the concrete core of the building and frame its 40 floors, at 42nd Street and Eighth Avenue.  read more »

The School of Visual Arts, one of the few institutions of higher learning to both advertise on the subway and maintain its aura of cool, is expanding due west.  read more »

In defiance of elementary supply and demand, commercial rents continue to rise in Manhattan, even as vacancy rates do, too.

Property owners asked an average rent of $67.13 per square foot from January through March for Manhattan commercial spaces from Lower Manhattan to 72nd Street, a 25 percent increase over the same time last year, according to brokerage Cushman  read more »

In a hillside bunker in a New Mexico desert two weeks ago, a New York architect peered through a periscope as, about 1,300 feet away, a simulacrum of the Freedom Tower’s exterior was blown up.

“Once the charge was detonated, even from a quarter of a mile away, the entire bunker shook,” said Carl Galioto, a partner at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, the architecture firm that designed One World Trade Center.  read more »

A Lamborghini dealer to the stars is moving his Long Island exotic car business to the ground floor of a new Harlem condo tower this summer, gambling on the cultural cachet of a neighborhood that, even in better economic times, wasn’t exactly Rolls-Royce territory.

Macky Dancy, part owner of Dancy Power Automotive Group, will in June open his exotic car dealership on the ground floor of the  read more »