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Gehry Gets Topped Out in Lower Manhattan

By Eliot Brown | November 20, 2009 | 8:20 am

... READ MORE»

Gehry Gets Topped Out in Lower Manhattan

By Eliot Brown | November 20, 2009 | 8:20 am

... READ MORE»

Rendering of Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn.

More Litigation, Questions Hurled at Atlantic Yards as Finance Deadline Nears

By Eliot Brown | November 19, 2009 | 5:11 pm

During its six years in the court of public opinion, this much has been certain about the planned Atlantic Yards project: It's not without... READ MORE»

Study: Subprime Loans Went to Minority-Heavy Neighborhoods

By Matt Frassica | November 19, 2009 | 3:27 pm

Residents of largely non-white neighborhoods in New York City were far more likely to receive a subprime loan than those in largely white neighborhoods, regardless of the borrower's race, according to a new study from NYU's Furman... READ MORE»

8.5 Bathrooms, Seven Bedrooms, $1 M. Off

By Max Abelson | November 19, 2009 | 10:44 am

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Silverstein Wants $2.6 B. in WTC Bonds—But for What?

By Eliot Brown | November 18, 2009 | 5:10 pm

Anyone paging through the end of The Times' business section Wednesday might have noticed an unusual legal notice nestled in between the commercial real estate classifieds and a bank ad (a reader had to point it out to us):  NEW YORK LIBERTY DEVELOPMENT CORPORATION Notice of Public... READ MORE»

Rothschild Manse, Almost Woody Allen's, Hops from $15 M. to $35 M. to $25.5 M.

By Max Abelson | November 18, 2009 | 3:55 pm

Five and half years ago, the Century Foundation's enormous brownstone at 41 East 70th Street nearly sold to Woody Allen and his wife, until he decided that renovating the place from offices into a house would take too much work. The house was asking $15... READ MORE»

Unions on Tuesday advocated for 'living wage at Kingsbridge Armory.

Four Years Hard Labor

By Eliot Brown | November 17, 2009 | 7:48 pm

A repetitive refrain filled City Hall’s council chambers on Tuesday morning. For a good hour at a zoning committee hearing on the contentious plan to redevelop the Bronx’s Kingsbridge Armory into a mall, council member after council member battered the Bloomberg administration and the developer, the Related Companies, with a similar line of questioning: Given that city subsidies are to be used in the $323 million project, why isn’t there a guarantee that all... READ MORE»

Iris Weinshall.

Brick Throwing! Law Prof Questions CUNY’s Deal with Citibank

By Dana Rubinstein | November 17, 2009 | 7:40 pm

On Saturday, Oct. 14, a CUNY law professor named Dinesh Khosla sent a very polite memo to the “law-school community,” titled, “Our New Building.” The memo wondered why CUNY, a public university financed by taxpayers, is paying a decidedly above-market price ($155 million) for its new, 225,000-square foot home at Citigroup’s 2 Court Square in Long Island... READ MORE»

Mr. Lazenby back in the day.

Bond Girl Melanie Lazenby Sells $1.85 M. Co-Op

By Max Abelson | November 17, 2009 | 6:59 pm

Melanie Lazenby, the 36-year-old Elliman broker whose father, George, starred in the wildly wonderful On Her Majesty’s Secret Service, finally has an apartment all her own. According to a deed, she just sold off the $1.85 million West Ninth Street co-op she owned with her mother, the Gannett publishing heiress Christina Matser, then bought a smaller condo at the new Superior... READ MORE»

Enigmatic Arriviste Marco Stoffel Loses West 12th House to Sheriff

By Max Abelson | November 17, 2009 | 6:53 pm

Marco Stoffel is a mysterious... READ MORE»

The Paramount Hotel.

Paramount Hotel, La MaMa Theater and Two Townhouses Landmarked

By Roland Li | November 17, 2009 | 4:43 pm

The city's Landmarks Preservation Commission on Tuesday designated the Paramount Hotel, La MaMa Experimental Theatre Club and two Eighth Avenue townhouses as landmarks. The Paramount Hotel, at 235-245 West 46th Street between Broadway and Eighth Avenue, was built in 1927 and 1928, according to Community Board 5, which endorsed the landmarking in June. Theater architect Thomas Lamb designed the building, his only hotel design, built for visitors to Times... READ MORE»

Lever House.

Gilding the Lobby Lily

By Dana Rubinstein | November 17, 2009 | 4:21 pm

The frugality fad is fading fast. Bidders are dropping multimillions on Warhols at Sotheby’s; Goldman Sachs wives are preparing holiday shopping extravaganzas in anticipation of record bonuses; and in the realm of commercial real estate, tenants are spending more than $100 a square foot on office space (in which to hang their newly acquired  ... READ MORE»

CUNY’s New Community College

By Dana Rubinstein | November 17, 2009 | 1:13 pm

The City University of New York is slogging ahead with plans for a new, experimental community college, and has enlisted brokerage Newmark Knight Frank to find it a temporary home. The broker leading the hunt is Howard Kesseler, a Bowdoin-educated executive managing director who has grown popular with the education crowd, having represented both MetSchools and the Department of Education in their Manhattan... READ MORE»

In the Zoning

By Jotham Sederstrom | November 16, 2009 | 3:12 pm

The Commercial Observer: How have all the zoning changes over the last eight years impacted... READ MORE»

Howard Nottingham’s clients have included Chase Manhattan Bank, MetLife, New York Law School and Cablevision’s Rainbow Media Holdings.

The Mechanic

By Jotham Sederstrom | November 16, 2009 | 3:05 pm

Before he was a leader in the New York commercial real estate market, Howard Nottingham was a Chevrolet dealer in Indiana, a career that, he says plainly, he was happy to scrap. Besides a few perks here and there—like being invited to take a sponsored pace car for a whirl at the famed Indianapolis Motor Speedway, home to the Indy 500—he has no regrets about a career change that has led him along the circuitous... READ MORE»

Obsolete home decor.

Developers Experiment With Smoking Bans

By Molly Fischer | November 16, 2009 | 2:20 pm

Some New York developers are banning smoking in their rental units, reports The Times. Starting this month, Related will ask new tenants in some of its downtown buildings to agree not to smoke in their homes (smokers already residing will be grandfathered in); meanwhile, Kenbar Management will ban smoking not only inside apartments but also on all terraces and adjacent... READ MORE»

Doug Von Allmen, Big Scott Rothstein Investor, Wants $18.45 M. for Condo

By Max Abelson | November 16, 2009 | 12:24 pm

Earlier this month, a very wealthy and very Republican slice of Florida society was thrown into a very sweaty panic when the multimillionaire attorney Scott Rothstein was accused of running a Ponzi scheme that could total more than a billion dollars. Even though... READ MORE»

Outside Iran-Linked 650 Fifth, Just Another Rainy Day at the Office

By Roland Li | November 13, 2009 | 2:40 pm

On a dreary Friday morning at 650 Fifth Avenue, a day after the U.S. government announced it would seize the building because of ownership links to Iran, it was just another day at the office. Most employees who worked there had little reaction to the seizure, and no one reported anything unusual about the building. “It’s like a normal office building,” said Reggie Mathas, 54, an IT technician for Delta National Bank, which occupies the... READ MORE»

Inside Iran's Fifth Avenue Skyscraper

By Dana Rubinstein | November 13, 2009 | 1:07 pm

Citigroup, Joseph Abboud, Kurt Salmon Associates, Pali Capital, and the Liz Claiborne Art Ortenberg Foundation are just a few of the bold-faced names who may have been paying rent to the Iranian government for their offices in a Fifth Avenue skyscraper, according to real estate sources, the tenants' own Web sites, and a complaint filed Thursday by the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New... READ MORE»

New Doubts About Atlantic Yards Financing as Deadline Approaches

By Eliot Brown | November 13, 2009 | 12:26 pm

On Sept. 9, Bruce Ratner, the powerful developer scrambling to start building a new Brooklyn basketball arena for the Nets, gave a prediction: The credit ratings agencies would deliver ratings on about $700 million in bonds for the arena by the end of the month. The ratings are a necessary precursor of financing the arena, an act that must be finished by Dec. 31 to meet an Internal Revenue Service... READ MORE»