Deeds and Deals

It’s a testament to the revival of lower Manhattan in so many ways that the following is routine, rather than surprising: Florida-based EB Developers plan a 280-room four-star hotel on a plot it recently bought for $45 million at 133 Greenwich Street, just south of the World Trade Center site.

Nearby, Joseph Moinian is building a 53-story W Hotel and condominium complex at 123 Washington Street, and plans are in the works for a 38-room boutique hotel at 50 Trinity Place as well as for a Sam Chang hotel at 33 Beekman Street.

“Downtown is an extremely hot market for hotels right now,” EB Developers Vice President and General Counsel Daniel Kaskel told The Observer. “At one point, we discussed a hotel with condos on top, but because of the location, we decided that keeping the building a hotel is the best use for this area.”

Mr. Kaskel said construction will start in six months and be completed in about two years. Like any ambitious developer, however, the company is lobbying for additional development rights that could hold the process up.

“We are working on securing further rights that could increase the scope of the project, but we should have most if not all of the outstanding issues finalized within a few months,” Mr. Kaskel said.

 

 

 

 

 

Bottles of single-barrel Jack Daniel’s line a glass case at the entrance of Justin Timberlake’s latest addition to the New York City restaurant scene.  read more »

Unbeknownst to most New Yorkers, if there is a pool table on the premises, the business must apply for a billiards license. Soon, that will no longer be an issue for most places.  read more »

The Blue Seats will open at 157 Ludlow Street on July 30, and will be the first sports bar to grace the area south of Houston Street and east of First Avenue.  read more »

Adam Gordon made his fortune by buying property and converting it to self-storage units. Now, he’s purchasing real estate with another goal in mind.  read more »

Long-time Brooklyn resident and pastry chef Erica Kalick stood in the dining room of Clem Labine’s Park Slope townhouse on Sunday afternoon and discussed two very different topics: the rugalach that she had made for the party and the ongoing fight against the Atlantic Yards project.  read more »

When Pizzeria De Santo opened at 173 Ludlow Street in January, the 900-square-foot spot seemed situated for success; it sat on one of the heaviest trafficked blocks on the Lower East Side, one that breeds late-night pizza cravings. Its owners, Joe Vicari and Salvatore Imposimato, the duo responsible for bottle-service-oriented spots like the now-defunct Happy Valley, planned on opening four more like it across the city.

By April, the space, though still open, was back on the market.

Pizzeria De Santo is not alone. As condos, boutique hotels and name-brand retailers invade the Lower East Side at an astonishing pace, smaller neighborhood establishments are being put back on the market at a similar rate.

Zozo’s, a sandwich and smoothie spot at 172 Orchard Street, was put up for sale in February, just two years after opening. Kebab House II, a restaurant at 144 Orchard Street, has been on the market for close to a year. Though both are still in business, the owners are clearly looking to get out.

“From a survival standpoint, this is a different Lower East Side than it was three years ago,” a neighborhood broker told The Observer. “A few years ago, places could slide by because the rent was not that bad. Now, you can’t afford it for very long if you don’t develop a following.”

Hospitality broker and consultant Steven Kamali—who, according to sources, recently sold 137 Ludlow Street, home of the club Libation, for $5.5 million—has a slightly different take.

“The draw of the Lower East Side is that it is an incredible neighborhood that thrives on the diverse group of people that come to visit,” Mr. Kamali told The Observer. “However, there is now such a saturation of bars and restaurants that a lot of places suffer.”

Indeed. There are 40 liquor licenses along Rivington, Orchard and Ludlow streets between Houston and Delancey streets, according to Community Board 3. Twenty-one of those are on Ludlow Street alone.

While some blame the overabundance of choices in the neighborhood, others say that it boils down to expectations.

“In the case of Pizzeria De Santo, the owners realized that it was not the money they’re used to,” James Famularo, a broker for a number of downtown spaces including Zozo’s and Pizzeria De Santo, told The Observer. “When you’re used to club money—that is, $20 cover charges and bottle service—a dollar for a slice of pizza just doesn’t seem like a lot. It’s like being a hedge-fund guy and then selling newspapers.”

Accolades and ambient music were the order of the day at last week’s talk by Dr. Andrew Weil at the new Miraval Living condominium on the Upper East Side.  read more »

Wine aficionado Jay McInerney’s book-signing at 310 East 53rd Street last week seemed a little out of place.  read more »

The dramatis personae of most development dramas have become all too familiar. There’s the beleaguered small property owner. The well-funded property developer. And Mammon playing a powerful role as the property finally gets developed.  read more »

How does an infamous pornographer’s $59 million mansion turn into a 1919-era townhouse for a Metropolitan Life kingpin?  read more »

The famed architect of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain, and the Walt Disney Concert Hall in L.A. (not to mention the would-be Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn) is donating designs for a play space in Battery Park.  read more »

In the coming months, Manhattan will get two new spots where patrons will be able to mount a mechanical bull. Incredibly, the Capital of the World is currently devoid of any places offering such amusement.  read more »

Four times more expensive than the Stuy Town deal, it’s the largest deal in Tishman Speyer’s history.  read more »

After getting around a few obstacles, Jacques Torres is finally set to bring his famously rich hot chocolate to the Upper West Side.  read more »

On Monday, May 21, Brooklyn Borough President and Atlantic Yards super-fan Marty Markowitz replaced nine members of Community Board 6. While on its face the move seemed fairly routine, Mr. Markowitz and his allies, including City Councilman Bill de Blasio, purged the board members apparently because of their steadfast opposition to the Atlantic Yards project in central Brooklyn.  read more »

The 39-year-old “semi-retired” trader has been living in the Archives, at 666 Greenwich (Monica Lewinsky’s former digs), since 1997. He loves the building and said he had no problems with any of the tenants until Ms. Armstrong’s arrival in March 2004. In fact, it wasn’t until a night in March 2006 that Mr. Rehder realized that he was disturbing anyone.  read more »

Tim Gunn’s new television show is currently being filmed in the center of New York’s dying club district.  read more »

Deeds filed in city records on Monday show that David Geffen sold his apartment to the alliterative Blackstone Group co-founder Pete Peterson for $37.5 million.  read more »

The demolition has already started at Little Charlie’s Clam House. All that’s still standing of the restaurant at 19 Kenmare is the bar that served drinks for the past 80 years.  read more »

There may be a very simple reason that Madonna has yet to close on a townhouse for her highly anticipated return to the Big Apple: Her bids are too low.

The Queen of Pop has been drastically underbidding on some of the city’s most luxurious properties, according to a broker who represents a number of high-end listings in the city.

The most notable bid to date, according to the broker, was for 8 East 62nd Street. Madonna reportedly offered $25 million for the famed John Duncan Mansion. That is quite the celebrity discount, as the 14,700-square-foot property is currently listed for $35 million.

This is the mansion that Madonna had “fallen for” in March, according to the New York Post. The six-floor townhouse has seven bedrooms, 10 bathrooms, three kitchens, a gym with a sauna, and a garden.

Perhaps the bargain-hunting makes sense. The Material Girl did only make $175 million last year, according to Billboard magazine.

The Lower East Side Tenement Museum is expanding. On May 1, the museum closed on a deal to buy the five-story building at 81 Delancey Street for just under $7 million, according to Renée Epps, the museum’s executive vice president.  read more »

How do you solve a problem like Gowanus? On the one hand, it’s an oddly quiet valley of low buildings and big skies between Park Slope and Carroll Gardens, where pedestrian bridges cut across a winding canal.  read more »

“A building, the architects think, is made of metal, steels, aluminum, glass,” said Philippe Starck, arguably one of the most peculiar and famous French designers in the world, speaking to The Observer on Tuesday morning. “Between the greedy money guy and the architect, where is the life? Where is the love? That’s what we are; that’s what we bring. We are flesh. We are sweat. We are human.”  read more »

Billionaire J. Christopher Flowers has finally flipped his 87-year-old limestone mansion at 12 East 73rd Street.  read more »

The reigning Republican in New York City has kept his distance from the reigning Republican in Washington, D.C., but it turns out that they see eye-to-eye on congestion pricing.  read more »

o, as we all know by now, Lev Leviev’s Africa Israel will buy the longtime headquarters of The New York Times at 229 West 43rd Street for $525 million.  read more »

After months of official tests that showed no contamination, city inspectors last week trundled over to the Sheffield, a West 57th apartment tower which is the site of a contentious condominium conversion, and determined that, yes, indeed, there was asbestos in the ceiling.

The discovery of the carcinogenic building material in the ceiling coating put a halt to the renovations to allow for a top-to-bottom clean-up.

The presence of asbestos in and of itself is not illegal—but when renovations may disturb asbestos-containing material, they have to be undertaken by certified handlers who know how to eliminate the risk of any sort of dispersion of the carcinogen through proper abatement practices. Earlier tests by a contractor hired by the Sheffield’s landlord, Kent Swig, showed no evidence of asbestos.

Ian Michaels, a spokesman for the city Department of Environmental Protection, said that seven out of 12 tests taken on April 17 came back positive for asbestos, meaning that a licensed asbestos-removal firm would have to do the work. Mr. Swig is having the textured, stucco-like ceilings sanded down.

Rent-stabilized tenants, who are permitted by law to remain in the building during the renovations and even after the conversion, have raised a ruckus over the disruptive renovations, and—as reported in the April 23 Observer—have enlisted the support of City Councilwoman Gale Brewer and other local politicians. Tests taken by consultants hired by the tenants showed the presence of asbestos in the ceiling coating as well as in dust generated by the renovations.

Mr. Swig said that a variety of inspectors—from the D.E.P., the state, his own contractors and those hired by his lenders—took more than 150 samples of the ceilings, and that those samples showed no evidence of asbestos.

“The trace amounts are way under the legal limit,” he told The Observer. “I would argue that whoever’s data that was that came out with a positive trace was inaccurate.”

Mr. Michaels, the D.E.P. spokesman, countered that the tests showed that the ceilings contained more than 1 percent of asbestos, which is the threshold at which proper abatement procedures must be followed.

He said that Mr. Swig has been ordered to hire an asbestos-licensed firm to clean the building’s common areas and also to use a licensed abatement firm to continue work on the ceilings. In addition, the landlord has agreed to offer the current tenants air-monitoring tests and cleaning services inside their apartments, and may yet face fines, Mr. Michaels said.

Mr. Swig characterized the clean-up and subsequent abatement as “voluntary,” because he said he could have disputed the results and asked for new tests.

“We have to err on the side of extreme caution,” he said on Tuesday. “We are in the process now of wiping down the building from bottom to top. That will take two weeks to do, and then we will voluntarily treat the removal of any other material as asbestos, even though it may not be.”

The D.E.P had taken 10 samples from ceilings at the Sheffield previously, but none of them showed a presence of the carcinogen, Mr. Michaels said. He said that when the Sheffield was built, the contractors may have used different mixtures of substances in different parts of the building.

Grace Hightower has a saintly husband (Robert De Niro), a new Central Park West duplex (which cost $20.9 million) and a freshly bought fixer-upper townhouse (on far East 89th Street).

So she apparently didn’t need her 67-square-foot storage room at the Upper East Side’s Trump Palace. According to city records, she sold that closet in March for a hefty $13,000—about twice what she paid back in June 2003. The buyers are Palace residents Douglas Bendt and his wife Sonia, a real-estate broker.

In case Ms. Hightower still craves more space than the 15 rooms in her Central Park West spread, she has three more storage rooms and a 1,653-square-foot apartment in the Trump condo.

Mr. De Niro’s 25 major film awards, after all, take up a lot of room.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Want to suck up to your landlord? Name a menu item in his honor.

Consider the “Vornado,” the greasy, chewy, rather sauceless and entirely too cheesy 11-inch, thin-crust personal pizza served up at Joe O’s—the hallowed Hotel Pennsylvania’s downstairs bar and restaurant, located along West 33rd Street.

The entire building, built in 1919, is presently owned by real-estate behemoth Vornado Realty Trust. How has the landlord responded to its $13 tomato, pepperoni and mozzarella memorial?

By likening the whole historic property to a “parking lot” in its 2005 annual report, and by reportedly planning to tear it down and construct an enormous office tower in its place.

“That’s funny,” remarked a bartender at Joe O’s on Friday afternoon, acting completely unaware of the landlord-entree connection.

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A struggling writer in New York City faces “a deadline for an article."  read more »

Forest City Ratner is looking to compete for some of New York’s scarce tax-exempt bonds to finance a Frank Gehry–designed tower in lower Manhattan.

The 950-foot-tall tower, to be built on a parking lot between Spruce and Beekman streets, promises to be one of the flashiest—and most expensive—new buildings south of midtown: some 920 titanium-and-glass-clad apartments shooting up from a low-slung base just off the Brooklyn Bridge’s entrance ramps. But first, Bruce Ratner, Forest City’s C.E.O. and president, has to find the money to build it.

Loren Riegelhaupt, a spokesman for Forest City Ratner, said in a statement that work was beginning on a K-8 public school that will occupy the first five floors while the developer “continues to develop the program for the mixed-use tower.” He added that Mr. Gehry’s firm “is completing the architectural design of the building.”

The 74-story tower has gone through a variety of designs, concepts and financing plans since Mr. Ratner first won the parking lot in a bidding war in 2003. In 2005, the city’s Department of Education struck a deal to build a $65 million K-8 school at the base. The school’s opening was at first scheduled for fall 2008, but has been pushed back a year, according to department spokeswoman Margie Feinberg.

Ms. Feinberg said that the city would pay for the school.

Forest City was also promised $190 million in Liberty Bonds—granted by the federal government after Sept. 11 to stimulate construction—to finance a mix of rentals and condominiums above the school. But since then, Forest City has indicated that it is planning an all-rental building, according to documents on file at the city’s Housing Development Corporation.

One portion—presumably the top—would be entirely market-rate rentals and could be financed with Liberty Bonds, which continue to be reserved for the project. The middle portion would consist of mixed-income rentals, 20 percent of which would be priced for low-income households. The school would occupy the lowest five floors, along with retail and possibly a medical facility.

In a request filed last year with the H.D.C., Forest City said it was planning to apply for up to $450 million in tax-free bonds that would cover up to 750 of the units in the middle portion of the building. But the developer will have to wait in line for these bonds because the city largely depends on the state for tax-exempt bonding authority. The state has received billions of dollars in requests that it cannot accommodate this year.

“By the end of June this year, the H.D.C. is completely out of volume cap,” said Emily Youssouf, the president of the H.D.C. “[The developers] are trying to figure out their financing.”

Taken together, the $190 million in Liberty Bond financing, which was supposed to underwrite 720 apartments, and the $450 million in 80-20 financing, to cover 750 units, accounts for more than the 920 apartments that Forest City is planning. That means the developer has room to tip the balance toward more or fewer market-rate units depending on the various tax advantages.

Forest City has begun excavation of the site, although it has yet to receive approval for the tower plans from the Department of Buildings, according to a department spokeswoman. Plans submitted last April were quickly rejected because of “issues of noncompliance with the building and zoning regulations,” according to department spokeswoman Kate Lindquist. The developer submitted another set of plans in January that are the subject of ongoing discussions.

Rough designs filed with the housing agency show that the tower would have a large five-story base, on top of which a narrow column would rise to 950 feet—the second-tallest building downtown—with small setbacks on the 37th and 49th stories. Public plazas would border the tower on two sides.

Sex still sells. Last Wednesday, in a dimly lit barroom at the hotel 60 Thompson, real-estate folk introduced a project called Upstairs: 15 apartments for sale atop Tribeca’s Smyth Hotel.

There was a woman in pink panties, one in fishnets, one in a black bra, one splayed on a couch in heels: Their images flashed by on a flat-screen TV near the entryway, with slogans like “EVERY NIGHT IS AN ADVENTURE” and “CHANCE ENCOUNTERS. REGULARLY.”

The near-nude marketing must work, because four of the Upstairs condos, at 85 West Broadway, have signed contracts—and they don’t open until 2008.

Yet the buyers won’t all be bachelors. “Three different groups of women asked me, ‘If I buy an apartment here, am I going to meet a guy?’” said Sean Turner, executive vice president at Stribling, the marketer of the condos. “I never thought of it that way, but …. Yeah! You’ll probably meet a guy. But that’s not why you buy an apartment.”

Then why do New Yorkers buy Upstairs apartments?

“The physical design, as well as the lifestyle we believe it is going to create, is to a large extent sexy,” said developer Jason Pomeranc, the hotelier also behind 60 Thompson. “It allows people to live a lifestyle that is aspirational and sometimes slightly impractical and yet extremely luxurious.”

It costs $1.1 million for 477 square feet of luxurious impracticality, $3.35 million for 1,513 square feet or $4,800,000 for the all-aspiring penthouse. And according to the marketing materials, additional fees may apply for the 24-hour room service, housekeeping, “bathroom amenity service” and in-room massage.

Madonna postponed a tour of 179 Ludlow Street on the Lower East Side. She was supposed to visit last week and see if the building could house her new Kabbalah center.  read more »

Felicity Leaving the Village? Keri Russell Unloads Duplex    read more »

Last Call for Bar’s Lonely Anti-Atlantic Yards Boycott    read more »

Last Call for Bar’s Lonely Anti-Atlantic Yards Boycott    read more »

Markowitz Claims Jitney for Brooklyn   It all started with Marty Markowitz:    read more »

Markowitz Claims Jitney for Brooklyn   It all started with Marty Markowitz:    read more »

Madonna Watch 2007: She’ll Be Back to Buy    read more »

Madonna Watch 2007: She’ll Be Back to Buy    read more »

Blood on the Brokerage Floor: Corcoran Heavyweights Jump to Brown Harris Stevens    read more »

Blood on the Brokerage Floor: Corcoran Heavyweights Jump to Brown Harris Stevens    read more »

Stonewall Reopening; Will It Be ‘Disruptive’?    read more »

Stonewall Reopening; Will It Be ‘Disruptive’?    read more »

Private School? Play Here! Public School? Wait Over There!    read more »

Private School? Play Here! Public School? Wait Over There!    read more »

Private School? Play Here! Public School? Wait Over There!    read more »