Larry Silverstein

Fifteen minutes ago was the deadline for developers to bid on one of Manhattan's prime trophy properties -- 1301 Avenue of the Americas, also known as the Credit Lyonnais Building, at the corner of 52nd Street.

The cloud-buster is one of the seven so-called "Equity Portfolio" properties that beleaguered mogul Harry Macklowe bought last year for $7 billion (in those bubbly days, he only had to put down $50 million of his own money).  read more »

Yesterday morning we took a little jaunt downtown to check out the progress of the Freedom Tower. Accompanied by some folks from the Port Authority, which is developing the tower, we took a few shots from the construction site. Work is slated to rise above street level later this year.

For now, the sub-grade work seems to have a whole lot of workers installing a whole lot of cement and rebar. The site was mostly empty and the vast majority of the work has come within the last year. The Port Authority said they still are on schedule for completion in 2012.  read more »

Developer Harry Macklowe’s descent from the pinnacle of Manhattan real estate will continue apace April 30, the day bids are due for several of the seven Manhattan towers he bought so spectacularly in February 2007.

Those readying bids for the cloud-busters include many of the same developers who circled Mr.  read more »

Governor Paterson indicated he would re-examine the rebuilding effort at the World Trade Center site, where the billions of dollars of projects faced years of delays before moving into the construction phase in the past year and a half.

“We have to go back and revisit the issue at Ground Zero,” Mr. Paterson said at a breakfast this morning hosted by the Association for a Better New York. “As we stand right now, it will be September 11 of 2011 before anything is actually built, and estimates are that that may be two or three years off. We can do better than that, because Ground Zero should always be a symbol of our resilience and an engine of our downtown economy.”

The implications of this statement--and what it means to "revisit" the issues there--are not entirely clear as construction on the Freedom Tower’s foundation is already well underway (we bumped into its architect, David Childs, this afternoon, who said construction is going well), as is sub-grade work on the PATH station, and the memorial. Developer Larry Silverstein recently started early work on two of his three towers for the site, too.  read more »

“Wow, look at the mist,” murmured Sarah Craig, a Vassar College freshman, as she and 60 other students walked onto the 52nd floor of Seven World Trade Center, developer Larry Silverstein’s glamorous office skyscraper that, this rainy afternoon, pierced the clouds.

Thanks to the top 10 floors still being up for lease, the penthouse hosts a lot of visitors — Mr. Silverstein’s publicist and his staff lead four to five tours a week — and lots of glamorous parties.

On Feb. 12, the starkly gorgeous concrete-and-glass space hosted babealicious swimsuit models celebrating the release of the 2008 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue (the models traded their bikinis for cocktail dresses for a party that Silverstein Properties spokesman Dara McQuillan said was fabulous).

Of course, the Vassar students weren’t there to chat about star-studded fetes. The three classes — Intro to Urban Studies, Urban Geography and Architecture of the Modern World — had bussed in from Poughkeepsie and spent the day touring Chase Plaza and the perimeter of Ground Zero.  read more »

Seven weeks after he had hoped to start construction, Larry Silverstein is ready to build at Ground Zero, as the Port Authority announced today it has finished excavations and cleared space for World Trade Center Towers 3 and 4.

The Port Authority missed its deadline of Jan. 1 to turn over the site to Silverstein Properties, and has owed $300,000 a day to the developer since, an amount that now exceeds $14 million. However, the cost is offset some, as the agency has said it offered a $10 million incentive to its contractors to finish before the deadline.

Completion of the towers is expected for 2011.  read more »

If there ever was any doubt, now it’s clear: Larry Silverstein has a taste for tall buildings downtown.  read more »

Developer Larry Silverstein publicly professed his love for Harry Macklowe’s GM Building today, though was mum on whether he is interested in buying a stake—or all—of Mr. Macklowe’s prized tower at 767 Fifth Avenue.

“I think the General Motors building is perhaps one of New York’s finest buildings—it’s a gem, it’s a trophy,” he told a gaggle of reporters at this morning’s Downtown Alliance breakfast.  read more »

We got an email from Silverstein Properties early this morning. Developer Larry Silverstein will unveil this coming Tuesday Robert A.M. Stern's design for the condo-hotel project at 99 Church Street in Lower Manhattan. The unveiling will come as part of a breakfast presentation hosted by the Alliance for Downtown New York.

The Church Street project will rise 66 stories and include 175 luxury hotel rooms and 143 condos. Mr.  read more »

With the Port Authority’s announcement on Monday that it is facing four to six weeks of delays at Ground Zero, it seems Larry Silverstein will have to wait a few more weeks before his test begins.  read more »

Paramount Group’s sale of 1177 Avenue of the Americas to Larry Silverstein and CalSTRS pension fund just popped up on city records, and the final tally: $1,000,850,706.

We reported in November about the sale, and then Silverstein Properties put out a release earlier this month acknowledging that the deal was indeed for over $1 billion.

Almost as if to say, “Really—we aren’t upset,” Silverstein Properties has issued an addendum to its earlier statement on the Port Authority’s excavation delays for Towers 3 and 4 at the World Trade Center site, showering even more praise on the Port Authority.  read more »

The Port Authority acknowledged today that it will miss its deadline of Jan. 1, 2008 to finish up excavations on the bathtub for World Trade Center Towers 3 and 4, thereby owing developer Larry Silverstein more than $12 million in delay penalties given the agency’s current timeline.

The Port Authority will owe Silverstein Properties $300,000 for every day until the excavations are done, and in a statement, the agency said that the bathtub would be ready for complete handover to Mr. Silverstein in about two to four weeks after mid-January (when they expect to finish excavations for Tower 4).

The Port Authority, which owns the World Trade Center site and is leasing the land for Towers 2, 3, and 4 to Silverstein, said in the statement that the hit from the penalties will in part be passed along to its contractors.

Silverstein, in a statement, said it will begin “pre-construction activities” as the firm waits on the Port.

Release after the jump.

   read more »

Larry Silverstein's firm announced on Thursday that it had bought 1177 Avenue of the Americas for over $1 billion. Silverstein properties partnered with the California State Teachers’ Retirement System, and the joint venture bought the midtown tower from Paramount Group.

The Observer broke the news of the deal last month. It's the third big purchase Mr. Silverstein has made with CalSTRS.

Thirty-one down, 11 to go.  read more »

What credit crunch? King of Downtown wins bid for midtown’s 1177 Avenue of the Americas.  read more »

Larry Silverstein is going big in midtown, as the Paramount Group has agreed to sell its tower at 1177 Avenue of the Americas to Silverstein Properties and the California-based CalSTRS pension fund for more than $1 billion, a source confirmed today.  read more »

The contracts for the foundations of two World Trade Center towers have been awarded, Silverstein Properties announced today, as developer Larry Silverstein revs his engines before taking control of the site at the start of next year.

The contracts, totaling about $40 million, are fairly minimal given the approximately $7 billion cost of the three Silverstein towers on the site, though the contracts mark one of the first construction-related actions by Mr. Silverstein.

Press release after the jump.  read more »

Here we go: writing an article about an article about an article, but we cannot resist because the subject of that last “article” is Larry Silverstein—who is, according to a Columbia Journalism Review blog post, the media’s favorite developer.  read more »

The publisher of The American Lawyer and The National Law Journal will move its headquarters from midtown south to Larry Silverstein's 120 Broadway in lower Manhattan. ALM will occupy the fifth and sixth floors, totaling about 90,000 square feet, according to Silverstein Properties. The lease is for 10 years.

The Observer earlier covered non-financial services firms moving to lower Manhattan. And we covered a major lease renewal at 120 Broadway.

Roger Silverstein represented Silverstein Properties in the ALM lease. And Michael Cohen and Leon Manoff of GVA Williams represented the tenant.

The NCR Corporation is leasing a floor at 7 World Trade Center, the first of Larry Silverstein’s buildings at Ground Zero, bringing the occupancy rate up to 74 percent. The rent is said to be somewhere around $70 a square foot annually—an aggressive rate even for a booming downtown.

Governor Spitzer announced the deal this morning. Press release after the jump.

   read more »

Architect Robert A.M. Stern is coming to the financial district.

Larry Silverstein announced this morning that Mr. Stern will design 99 Church Street, his new luxury condo and residential project downtown.

Mr. Stern, the architect who designed the widely acclaimed Fifteen Central Park West, is a major coup for Mr. Silverstein who recently announced that 99 Church -- formerly an 11-story office tower -- would be razed to put up a new luxury tower. Construction is expected to be finished by 2011.

Release after the jump.  read more »

Crain's reports (via The Real Deal) that the law firm Kostelanetz and Fink has taken an eight-year lease for 14,000 square feet at Larry Silverstein's Seven World Trade Center. By our count, that brings the 1.7-million-square-foot tower to just over 72 percent full. There's a lot of space left, some of it in sizable chunks of over 30,000 feet. Get it while it's less than $100 a foot!

Larry Silverstein was on Nightline last night. The ABC News program depicted the World Trade Center developer as a striding, fast-talking, somewhat stubborn visionary "right out of central casting" who was "always, always selling." A pop-up video of the segment can be seen here.  

Silverstein project gets Greenwich Street address, as Trade Centers rise.  read more »

Anticipating the type of questions that arise this time of year, developer Larry Silverstein held a press conference today to assure everybody that rebuilding at the World Trade Center site continued on track, that shovels will go into the ground for his three towers in January, and that they would open in 2012.

If that’s not news, the 200-odd media people who turned out, many from national and international news outfits that cover developments like this from a distance, will try to believe really hard that it is. Instead of starchitects Richard Rogers, Sir Norman Foster and Fumihiko Maki, who attended last year’s unveiling of the actual designs, senior staff people from each of the three firms gave updates.

Yet the renderings looked remarkably the same, aside from a few details at street level.  read more »

JPMorgan Chase’s new skyscraper vindicates Silverstein’s downtown vision, but hold the applause—he’s still got his own towers to fill.  read more »

Larry Silverstein thinks JP Morgan Chase’s decision to move downtown is “tremendous.”

His full statement: “JPMorgan Chase is a tremendous addition to the new Downtown. Like the Goldman Sachs headquarters and the speedy lease-up of 7 World Trade Center, it proves again that Downtown has re-emerged as the financial capital of the world.”

Two months of negotiations by the Spitzer administration (and by Gov. Spitzer himself, who reportedly called in around 2 or 3 p.m. yesterday with advice of his own to help wrap things up) led to today’s $2 billion settlement of the outstanding insurance claims on the old World Trade Center.  read more »

Larry Silverstein has filled two-thirds of 7 World Trade Center. Silverstein Properties announced on Tuesday that DRW Trading has leased 8,568 square feet on the 34th floor. The company should be moved in by August.

Also, Silverstein Properties announces Moody's will take an extra 80,000 square feet in addition to the 590,000 they already signed on for. Steve Cuozzo of The Post reported that one a few weeks ago.

That means 1.1 million square feet is taken and roughly another 500,000 to go for the city's most valuable downtown office building.

Full-release after the jump.  read more »

- John Koblin

It’s the most lucrative era in the history of the city’s commercial real-estate market:  read more »

After months of speculation, Larry Silverstein has finally decided to convert 99 Church into a hotel-condo. The Real Deal has the scoop late this afternoon. Silverstein will build a 60-story mega-hotel-condo, with the first 20 floors turning into a ritzy hotel and the rest of the tower going residential.

Lauren Elkies quotes Lisa Silverstein, Larry's daughter and Vice President of Silverstein Properties, saying the site makes sense as condo since "there's zero competition."

"I realized there are just no grand Park Avenue apartments downtown, and I'd like to create that," Ms. Silverstein said.

So with Larry jumping on board--and Joseph Moinian building a W Hotel on Washington Street--is the swanky hotel the big new trend downtown? Who else is going to follow suit?

- John Koblin

Jeffrey Levine, the president of Douglaston Development and an influential real-estate developer, is resisting the cap that the state financing agency has placed on tax-exempt bonds for mixed-income apartment buildings.

Mr. Levine is one of two developers who received permission to use tax-exempt financing in the waning days of the Pataki administration. (The other one was Larry Silverstein.) Shortly after Governor Spitzer took over in January, the state Housing Finance Agency froze those projects and nine others that had not gotten so far because it did not have authority to issue that much tax-exempt financing.  read more »

This week, as The Observer reported, HFA President and Chief Executive Priscilla Almodovar sent a letter to all applicants--including Mr. Levine and Mr. Silverstein--asking them to revise their applications for tax-exempt financing by March 16, limiting their requests to $1.5 million per affordable unit that they build.

Larry Silverstein, Tom Elghanayan, Jeff Levine, William Dickey and Steve Witkoff are staring a new monster in the face: the end of cheap financing that was supposed to help them settle Manhattan's wild West Side.

These five real estate developers thought they had it made last year when the state Housing Finance Agency approved their applications for tax-exempt bonds. But the incoming Spitzer administration noticed something funny: the rental boom was eating up all of the state's available bond volume. So, the administration froze the financing.  read more »

Counting several other projects at earlier stages of the approval process, the HFA has $4.8 billion worth of applications for tax-exempt bonds pending; it only expects to be able to dole out $590 million this year.

Larry Silverstein wants to add a 12-story, 83-unit, low-income rental building on West 42nd Street that will let him add an extra 10 stories or so on his planned River Place II next-door.

The low-income building, for households earning 80 percent of the area median income, gives Mr. Silverstein a 20 percent zoning bonus, enabling two 57-story towers at 600 West 42nd Street. The affordable-housing building comes in addition to 235 low-income units proposed for the high-rise towers, which will make Mr. Silverstein eligible for cheap state financing and another zoning bonus that he can then sell to other developers nearby.

Community Board 4, however, has asked the city to block the zoning bonus in large part because the entrance to the low-income building is on the 41st Street side, which is fairly bereft of anything interesting other than a bus garage.

"As planned, it will look and feel like the maids' quarters for the rest of the project," the letter, sent last week, said.

The two high-rises, arranged on the north and south sides of the block, will be entered from a plaza in between the two of them, which, in turn, will be reached via sidewalks or driveways accessible from both 41st and 42nd streets. There will also be some retail on the 41st Street side, according to a source familiar with the development.

Silverstein spokesman Dara McQuillan defended the plan, saying in a statement, "We have designed a residential community that will add 318 exquisite apartments for moderate- and low-income residents and families of the community, and we have no doubt that each of the units will be highly sought after." - Matthew Schuerman

In a strongly worded editorial, analyst Peter Slatin unloads on two major New York real estate projects that recently took big steps forward.

Mr. Slatin calls the Freedom Tower, for which steel columns were placed last week, "the egregiously clunky and skyline-sucking icon that Larry Silverstein and outgoing New York Governor George Pataki are determined to force on the city."

He, however, reserves his most searing ire for the Atlantic Yards project, which was approved by the state Public Authorities Control Board last week. Declaring some parts of it admirable (the new Nets arena, the fact that it will eradicate an old train yard), Mr. Slatin nevertheless dubs Atlantic Yards no better than one of the worst Hollywood movies yet made:

[Bruce] Ratner and [Frank] Gehry's Atlantic Yards, however, is more like "Ishtar" than, say, "Vertigo": big and stupid. Gehry's design deftly succeeds at simply overpowering itself and its surroundings, and offers its residents no homey concessions to the place they call home. It has all the urban charm of Cabrini-Green.

Ouch.

- Tom Acitelli

The Real Estate just got this wonderful, fuzzy, warm, delicious, inspiring holiday card from Silverstein Properties. Larry Silverstein, apparently, equates the holidays in New York with, well, the buildings planned for the trade center site, where he's the leaseholder. (Although, there is something inspiring about something - anything - finally rising there.) - Tom Acitelli

The agreement approved in September that relieved Larry Silverstein of the burden of leasing up the Freedom Tower still has not been signed, but officials say they are not intentionally waiting for sign-off from the next Governor. The delay is simply due to the volume of papers that must be prepared and checked, according to Port Authority spokesman Steve Coleman. "If you were to stack up all of these documents, they would be seven to eight feet high." The agreement will be signed "in a matter of days," Coleman said.  read more »

-Matthew Schuerman

Two World Trade Center insurers, Allianz and Royal & SunAlliance, are holding out on more than $803 million that is owed to developer Larry Silverstein (and by extension, the Port Authority), according to city Comptroller William Thompson. In a letter today, the Comptroller urged the state insurance superintendent, Howard Mills, to "compel these companies to meet their financial obligations." -Matthew Schuerman

Does 7 World Trade Center have another tenant? According to this morning's New York Post, the international bank ABN Amro is "taking a good look at 7 WTC, and sources say it sent Silverstein a 'proposal' last week."

A source close to the deal cautioned that the talks were "preliminary" but the company is "interested," according to the Post. ABN Amro already has offices on Park Avenue and Jersey City and is looking for 150,000 square feet in Manhattan to consolidate its facilities, said the Post. Of the 1.6 million square feet availale at WTC, 800,000 square feet is still available. Last week, NY1's Dominic Carter said to Larry Silverstein that the "glass is half full" at 7 WTC. Silverstein quipped that it is "more than half" full , turning the rumor mill on who the extra tenant could be.  read more »

- John Koblin

The Port Authority and Larry Silverstein announced that they finalized April's shuffle at Ground Zero which puts the Freedom Tower moves into government hands. Sort of final that is, but the number of loose ends ($1 billion in missing insurance money and whatever the lawyers find in actually doing the documents) is getting smaller.  read more »

The announcements are coming one-by-one to seal up the April agreement between the Port Authority and Larry Silverstein--designs for the next three towers, a million square feet in commitments--but one promised element that you won't see by Thursday's deadline is any sort of conclusion about who will run the 428,000-plus square feet of retail space at the World Trade Center site.

In April, along with taking over the Freedom Tower, the Port Authority agreed to sell the retail operating rights to Silverstein. The problem with doing so was that the Port Authority had already promised to let Westfield, an Australian mall operator, bid on the retail rights first. Somehow, the Port Authority would have to reject Westfield's offer, or issue such a discouraging prospectus that the mall company never would want the thing in the first place, all the while avoiding lawsuits.

Little wonder the Port Authority hasn't worked this one out.

Westfield, for one, is acting as if it will not let go easily. "Westfield is working within the process and is having ongoing discussions with the Port," spokeswoman Katy Dickey told us. "Westfield expects to exercise its right of first offer."

Silverstein, meanwhile, is still interested. "The caliber of retail has tremendous influence on the whole project," a real estate executive said. "The tenants upstairs want retail that is both high quality and also that will be useful to employees."

This is not a deal breaker, at least not yet, however.

"We don't see that as a barrier to reaching a final agreement this month," said Janno Lieber, Silverstein's project director for the World Trade Center site.

-Matthew Schuerman

People (perhaps even we did at one time in our lives) like to point out how much Daniel Libeskind's site plan has been abandoned, but today's unveiling of the next three towers at Ground Zero shows there's a lot of Danny left. Compare this after-dark rendering:

... with Libeskind's revised plans from September 2003:  read more »

City Comptroller Bill Thompson asks the Port Authority for an accounting of the $100+ million a year Larry Silverstein has been paying to lease the World Trade Center site, and wonders aloud whether the bi-state agency, which has been splurging on deep water ports and cross-Hudson tunnels, "is pursuing certain projects, or withholding funds for other projects, at the expense of redeveloping Ground Zero." (PDF)

-Matthew Schuerman (via Crain's)  read more »

Two days after giving up on five floors it had hoped to lease at 7 World Trade Center, the Beijing-based Vantone real estate firm was on the hunt today for another location for its China Center, a mini-office center and gathering place for Chinese firms looking to break into the U.S. market. "They were looking at several places in Midtown and downtown, for rental or acquisition," said Kathy Wylde, president of the Partnership for New York City and a Vantone ally. The Freedom Tower, which is where Larry Silverstein wanted Vantone to go (after canceling its lease at 7 WTC), is not in the picture, Wylde said, because it would not be ready in time. -Matthew Schuerman

The director of the proposed China Center at 7 World Trade Center says Beijing Vantone never agreed to Larry Silverstein's deadlines. Full statement, put out by the Partnership for New York City, which helped bring the deal together in the first place, after the jump. -Matthew Schuerman  read more »

Beijing Vantone was one of those almost-tenants at 7 World Trade Center that were supposed to make people feel good about the future of downtown. Its executives were publicly feted in January when they signed a letter of intent to lease the five top floors.

Well, what good is a tenant if it cannot pay? Impatient after Vantone, which proposed creating a business center where Chinese companies could set up mini-offices to break into the New York market, kept missing deadlines, Larry Silverstein cancelled its lease today, according to a statement from his office.

"After the China Center's failure to deliver their letter of credit on Monday - the fourth time they missed an agreed deadline to post security - discussions about the China Center taking space at 7 World Trade Center have concluded," Silverstein said in the statement. " While it is unfortunate that an agreement could not be finalized, this is a minor and temporary setback in the building's leasing efforts. As has been reported, the Silverstein organization is in serious discussions with a wide variety of world-class companies interested in space in the building."

-Matthew Schuerman

Developer Joseph Moinian got preliminary approval for $50 million in low-interest Liberty Bonds this morning to build a hotel a little south of Ground Zero, the city's Economic Development Corporation just announced. The amount represents a cut from the $147 million he had originally applied for last spring, but still digs into the $1.67 billion that rival Larry Silverstein originally wanted to rebuild the World Trade Center. Under the renegotiated April agreement, Silverstein and the Port Authority are dividing up responsbility for the new center, and with it the $1.62 billion Liberty Bonds that remain and which were also given a first nod this morning. -Matthew Schuerman

The Port Authority, et. al., follow through on their threat to sue Larry Silverstein's insurers--because they haven't promised that they won't try to get away with paying less?

Statement after the jump.  read more »

-Matthew Schuerman

Now that the Port Authority, the Governor, Mayor and Larry Silverstein are all in agreement about the World Trade Center, they are ganging up on the insurers who have yet to pay Silverstein more than $2 billion in court-ordered awards. Today, Governor Pataki's press office e-mailed a statement saying, "I have spoken with Governor Corzine and Mayor Bloomberg's offices and together we have asked the Port Authority and Silverstein Properties to commence appropriate legal action within the next several days to gain the resolution and assurances we need." Silverstein seconded that with a statement of his own.

Sources said a lawsuit could be filed early next week. Port Authority spokesman John McCarthy wouldn't confirm the schedule but said, "We are exploring our legal options."

Under the April 26 agreement, about 35 percent of the available insurance money was supposed to be transferred from Silverstein to the Port Authority to go towards the Freedom Tower but so far the insurance companies have not agreed that they would make the switch.

Oh, and anybody who thought the Rebuild Them Now Movement was dead should check out the comments on our previous Freedom Tower post. -Matthew Schuerman