The Related Companies has tapped Jay Cross, president of the New York Jets, to lead its $15 billion development over the West Side rail yards, bringing in a driving force behind the failed effort three years ago to build a West Side stadium on the same site.

Mr. Cross is a onetime real estate executive who has spent much of the last few years developing stadiums and arenas for professional sports teams, pushing through the new Meadowlands stadium, Miami’s AmericanAirlines arena and the Air Canada Centre in Toronto.  read more »

Location: On the rail yards, how did News Corp. tell you that they were no longer interested in being an anchor tenant?

Mr. Blau: There were several rounds, and they [the M.T.A.] called us in for what they said was the final round. We had hoped, or thought, that we would be designated at this meeting, which was to happen the next day; and literally 12 hours before the meeting, we got a call from News Corp. that said while they were very, very interested in the site, they couldn’t agree to commit at that moment.  read more »

Check out the above rendering. We got it on Monday afternoon at a press conference to tout the deal struck this weekend between the Related Companies and the M.T.A. over the development rights of the West Side rail yards.

Look closely. An old rendering, from Related's original rail yards bid in November, featured a sign above the concert stage that read "myspace.com". It was, of course, a reference to then-anchor tenant News Corp., owner of MySpace.  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 »

News yesterday that Madison Square Garden's owner, the Dolan family, will renovate instead of moving across the street to the Farley Post Office seemed to doom the planned Moynihan Station, but the head of the project said today he thinks the family's decision "isn't irrevocable."

"We just need a lot of strong public leadership to get to the point where, you know, [the Dolans] see the project as a potential reality," Vishaan Chakrabarti, president of the Moynihan Station Venture (a team of the Related Companies and Vornado Realty Trust) said at a real estate luncheon today. The $14 billion Moynihan project would create a new transit hub to replace the aging Pennsylvania Station.  read more »

The Related Companies’ plans for a $600 million entertainment center along the Hudson River at Pier 40 is no longer being considered by the Hudson River Park Trust, the city-state agency that governs the park.

The news comes as Madison Square Garden announced it was moving forward with renovations of its existing facility, compromising a $14 billion plan to remake Penn Station and create a new office hub nearby, a plan in which Related, chaired by Stephen Ross, is a 50-50 partner with Vornado Realty Trust.  read more »

At the center of recent concern—voiced by advocates, officials and others involved with the process—surrounding the viability of the redevelopment of Pennsylvania Station is where all the money will come from to fund it. [More on the broader issue here.]

State officials have said the redevelopment of Penn Station, part of a grander project known as Moynihan Station, will cost at least $2.2 billion (with emphasis on “at least”), and there’s a whole lot more funding that needs to be secured.

And while the state and other officials deny the plan is falling apart, expressing optimism, we thought a recap of the various funding commitments and potential sources was in order:  read more »

Developers Related Companies and Vornado Realty Trust have been pouring money into the proposed redevelopment of Pennsylvania Station as part of the grand Moynihan Station project, spending tens of millions of dollars so far in the project’s planning.  read more »

Things don’t seem to be all that peachy these days in the planning process for a multi-billion-dollar redevelopment of Penn Station, to be known as Moynihan Station.

The plan for the project hinges on the Dolan family’s Madison Square Garden moving to the back of the neighboring Farley Post Office building, clearing the way to redo Penn Station, along with adding a concourse in the Farley building.

Though, in recent weeks, advocates, community members and others involved with the process have expressed increasing concern that the Garden could throw a wrench in the whole process, frustrated by the slow-moving bureaucracy and the intransigence of preservationists who are concerned about major alterations to the historic Farley building.  read more »

Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff’s right-hand man in the unsuccessful bid to land the 2012 Olympics started work on Monday at the Related Companies, according to The New York Times. Jay L. Kriegel became a senior adviser to the firm and to its chairman and C.E.O., Stephen Ross. Mr. Ross is also chairman of the Real Estate Board of New York.

New Yorkers of a certain age may know Mr. Kriegel best by the role he played as an aide to Mayor John Lindsay in the Serpico police-corruption brouhaha of the early 1970's. Here's an excerpt from Time magazine in January 1972:

In earlier testimony in closed sessions, Mayoral Assistant Jay Kriegel, 31, whom Lindsay has called the "best staff man in America," had admitted going to the mayor in 1967 with the sordid details of police crime that Detective Frank Serpico and Sergeant David Durk had given him. By the testimony of Durk and Serpico, Kriegel came back to them to report that the Lindsay administration was concerned about possible ghetto rioting and did not want to upset the police.

In his latest appearance before the commission, Kriegel told a different story. He said this time that he had never given the mayor more than a general idea of the cops' charges and did not provide him with specifics. Nor, said Kriegel, had he ever told Durk and Serpico that the mayor was concerned about bothering the police by acting on corruption. But the two policemen have stuck to their version.

Mr. Kriegel eventually escaped threats of a perjury indictment.  read more »