Under the new leadership of the dashing Billy Macklowe, Macklowe Properties appears to be lumbering ahead with its complicated and complication-ridden Drake Hotel development.

Either that, or Macklowe Properties is busy assembling a more lucrative parcel in the East 50s around Park Avenue to put on the market—Macklowe was reportedly considering selling the mega-site in May, before successfully selling the GM Building to Mort Zuckerman’s Boston Properties for a record-breaking $2.8 billion.

Either way, Audemars Piguet, the sole tenant in 40 East 57th Street, is out. Capping 14 months of negotiations, Macklowe has bought out the remaining 10 years on the Swiss watchmaker’s lease.  read more »

In the wake of his father Harry's near disastrous over-leveraging of the family business, Billy Macklowe has officially been named Macklowe Properties' new chairman and CEO. He has been working with his father since 1992, after a stint as a real estate finance analyst for Manufactures Hanover.

His father Harry has been named Chairman Emeritus of the firm.

The father and son were said to have a fractious relationship, which, according to a recent Wall Street Journal article, was made worse by Macklowe Properties' credit crisis woes. The tension between the two is said to have helped precipitate this change in the ranks.  read more »

Domestic players have bought three huge midtown towers once belonging to the beleaguered Macklowe Properties.

Shorenstein Properties has bought Park Avenue Tower and 850 Third Avenue for just shy of $1 billion.  read more »

The GM Building sale is "closing as we speak." That's according to Mort Zuckerman, who is addressing a Real Estate Board of New York luncheon this afternoon.

Mr. Zuckerman's Boston Properties, along with partners including Goldman Sachs, negotiated the purchase of the Macklowe Properties building late last month in a deal that valued it at around $2.8 billion. It's the most expensive building sale ever.

Albert Behler’s Paramount Group is one of the last behemoths standing in the competition to pay $1.5 billion for 1301 Avenue of the Americas, the Credit Lyonnais building that Harry Macklowe surrendered to Deutsche Bank earlier this year.  read more »

Mark Lanier, the 47-year-old attorney who litigated his way to CNBC fame by taking on Merck’s dreaded Vioxx, and who’s now representing sugar-cane farmers in their suit against Splenda, is doubling the size of his footprint in Harry Macklowe’s Tower 56.

Mr.  read more »

The first few days after the biggest U.S. building sale ever was inked, things at the GM Building were “pretty much routine” in the words of one doorman, save for the presence of a few unofficial, four-legged tenants seen scampering among the stuffed animals at FAO Schwartz.

Not many people who work at the GM Building appeared to notice that Harry Macklowe had hammered out a deal with Mort Zuckerman and partners on Saturday to sell the jewel in his real estate crown for about $2.8 billion. By now, longtime GM tenants have surely grown accustomed to a changing of the guard every so often. Manhattan's most expensive office tower has had four different owners since 1991—five if you count Sheldon Solow—some of whom have shaken things up, and others less so.  read more »

Harry Macklowe’s early morning Saturday sale of the GM Building and three other midtown towers to a group led by Mort Zuckerman’s Boston Properties did more than just yank New York’s most virile phallus from the market. The GM Building deal slaughtered what had become a favorite scapegoat among brokers for the dip in Manhattan building sales: that investors, bewildered by the credit crisis and unsure how to price their buildings, were waiting for Mr. Macklowe to trade and show them the way.  read more »

Billy Macklowe, president of Macklowe Properties since 2002, is expected in the next few weeks to succeed his father as chairman of the firm, according to the Wall Street Journal this morning.

The succession, not entirely voluntary on Harry's part, is fallout from the nearly $4 billion deal cut over the weekend that cost the Macklowes ownership of their jewel, the GM Building at 767 Fifth Avenue, as well as three other Midtown towers.  read more »

Here's a clip from January of Mort Zuckerman, a regular on The McGlaughlin Group (we're surprised, too).

Mr. Zuckerman's comments on the credit crisis and how that helped tank the economy seems today especially relevant and perhaps a bit ironic, given how all that played into his acquisition over the weekend of Harry Macklowe's GM Building and three other Midtown towers.  read more »