Commercial Observer

By Daniel Geiger 2/22 5:30pm

Agency Shifts

Nothing Sacred but the Truth.

Mirante’s Cushman Team Tapped as Leasing Agent at 321 44th Street

Kushner Companies has named a team from the real estate services firm Cushman & Wakefield as the new leasing agent for 321 West 44th Street, the asset that houses The New York Observer.

Arthur Mirante, C&W’s former chief executive who is now a top dealmaker at the firm, will lead leasing at the property along with C&W executives Jeff Lichtenberg and Joshua Goldman.

C&W will be replacing a team from Colliers International.


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By Daniel Edward Rosen 2/22 9:00am

Crime and Punishment

Wreckage from Upper East Side Crane Collapse.

Trial Begins for Operator Involved in Fatal Upper East Side Crane Collapse

The Manhattan District Attorney's office yesterday opened up its manslaughter trial against the owner of a construction crane involved in a 2008 accident that killed two workers, and prosecutors said it was that man's greed that lead to the fatal crane collapse, according to the Associated Press.

Prosecutors painted James Lomma, the head of New York Crane & Equipment Corp., as a man who passed on a crucial repair job on the faulty crane in favor of the bottom line.
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By Daniel Geiger 2/22 8:30am

On the Market

75 Rockefeller Plaza.

Al Fayed Shopping 75 Rockefeller Plaza

The real estate investor and British department store tycoon Mohamed Al Fayed is exploring a sale of the Manhattan office tower 75 Rockefeller Plaza.

According to executives who have been briefed on the offering, Mr. Al Fayed is aiming to negotiate a leasehold of the property in which he would continue to own the land under the 600,000-square-foot building and collect rent but put control of the asset in the hands of an investor.
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1 By Daniel Geiger 2/21 4:48pm

lease beat

ddd

Coffee Shop and Attractive Waiters Ink Renewal Deal at 27 Union Square West

The popular Union Square eatery The Coffee Shop has renewed its retail lease at its long time home at 27 Union Square West and also office space it has upstairs in the building.



The deal totals about 20,000 square feet and stretches for ten-years, according to Eric Gural, an executive at the real estate services firm Newmark Knight Frank who oversees leasing at the property and whose family owns the nearly 50,000-square-foot box-shaped, boutique building.
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By Jotham Sederstrom 2/21 1:50pm

The Plan

Picture 4

1078 Fulton Street

When Nechama Levy began her search for retail space last July, she took advantage of years of experience as a bicycle shop employee to inform her real estate decisions, and then Colliers International brokers Charles Goldberg and Hank Widmaier sealed the deal at 1078 Fulton Street.

Beside ample basement space, Ms. Levy also considered floor plates large enough to install what she described as ergonomically correct racks and other bicycle-specific design flourishes. After the jump, Geoffrey Prisco of Brutus Park Architecture and Ms. Levy review the floor plans with The Commercial Observer and discuss what, exactly, convinced the first-time business owner to open her 5,800-square-foot shop, Bicycle Roots, in Bedford-Stuyvesant.

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By Jeffrey Margolis 2/21 1:00pm

Raising the Bar

Jeffrey Margolis.

A Tenant’s List of Silent Leasing Issues

Silence is not always golden. In commercial leasing the “standard” form is anything but, and the typical verbiage we see (leaving aside issues of poor grammar and punctuation) is far from transparent. In fact, to do the right thing by our clients, savvy leasing professionals must also bring a laser-like focus on those “silent” lease issues—the ones lurking beneath the superficial form language—that are traps for the unwary and likely to have a substantial economic impact on landlord and tenant above and beyond a simple base rent calculation.

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By Daniel Edward Rosen 2/21 12:30pm

the sit-down

Gregg Weiser.

Moinian’s Main Man: Gregg Weisser on Columbus Circle and Young & Rubicam

Gregg Weisser knows how to handle a hot house. The newly anointed executive managing director of the Moinian Group, and volunteer fireman with the Kismet Fire Department in Fire Island, New York, is no stranger to putting out fires, be it a burning beach house or as a director of leasing across some of the city’s most notable addresses. As the real estate director of JPMorgan Chase, where he had worked for over 20 years, Mr. Weisser closed a million and a half feet of empty space in 1 New York Plaza.

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By Robert Sammons 2/21 12:00pm

Stat of the Week

Manhattan Overall Direct Availability.

38,791,855

Last week, the statistic was all about sublet availability and its recent improvement. This week we turn to direct availability, or the space marketed directly by the landlord of building.

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By Sam Chandan 2/21 11:30am

the lead indicator

Sam Chandan.

The Gordian Knot of Interest Rate Policy

The Federal Open Market Committee recommitted to its near-zero interest rate policy at its meeting in late January. Building on last summer’s announcement of a specific time horizon for its current level of accommodation, the committee pushed the expected date for tightening from next year to late 2014.

Why the change? Based on the Fed’s current assessment, economic and financial market conditions warrant a historically low Fed Funds target rate for at least another two years. The implications for commercial real estate are difficult to overstate given the critical role that low interest rates have played in the sector’s recovery.

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By Robert Knakal 2/21 11:00am

concrete thoughts

Robert Knakal.

Multi-Family Properties Reign Supreme

As we have seen, year after year, in the New York City investment sales market, multi-family apartment buildings is the asset class that is always in the highest demand. The inherent upside potential within these properties, based on artificially low rents created by rent regulation, keeps investors flocking to this product type and makes regulated apartment buildings the easiest property type to finance.

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By Daniel Geiger 2/21 10:30am

power broker

Adam Leitman Bailey.

The brouhaha behind the Ground Zero mosque introduced Adam Leitman Bailey to the world. So what’s next for real estate’s most public attorney?

Adam Leitman Bailey strode into the lobby of his lower Manhattan law firm dressed in a dark blue suit and blue shirt, his extended cuffs all but dangling from his jacket. No sartorial misstep, Mr. Bailey would explain. The cuffs protruded noticeably beyond his jacket sleeves for a reason.

“It’s essential,” said Mr. Bailey, the attorney who last year garnered national attention as counselor for the Ground Zero mosque developer Sharif El-Gamal. “I’ve studied everything about the court room. It’s a subconscious thing, but this shows a jury you have nothing to hide.”

As if to prove his point, Mr. Bailey awkwardly tucked the sleeve of his shirt back inside his jacket. “See?” said the attorney, who takes the nuances of his dress code so seriously that every new associate at the law firm shops for their first suit with him so that he can personally give them a lesson in proper courtroom attire. “You’re hiding something.”

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By Daniel Geiger 2/21 10:09am

Lease of the Week

Corporate Waterfront Center.

Garden State of Mind: Pearson and the Negotiations Behind its Hoboken Deal

When Kim Guadagno heard that the media and publishing giant Pearson was relocating from its longtime headquarters in Upper Saddle River, N.J., the first thing she recalled was a promise she had made.

Ms. Guadagno, New Jersey’s lieutenant governor and secretary of state, had been walking months earlier with Dawn Zimmer, the mayor of Hoboken, along that city’s waterfront.

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By Daniel Geiger 2/21 9:00am

Investment Sales

77 Commercial Street. (Courtesy Property Shark)

Chetrit Eyes 77 Commercial Street

Joe Chetrit is leading a partnership of investors in the acquisition of 77 Commercial Street, a development parcel in Greenpoint, Brooklyn that can accommodate about 270,000 square feet of residential development.

It’s not clear what Mr. Chetrit has negotiated to pay in the deal, but the property was being marketed by a Massey Knakal team led by the company’s chairman, Robert Knakal, that sources said was aiming to net a purchase price in the high $20 millions.
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