Dubai

Developers like Donald Trump and chocolatiers like Alison Nelson aren't the only ones eyeballing real estate in Dubai.

New York magazine reports that at least two Manhattan nightlife impressarios, Pink Elephant owner Josh Kaiser and Star Lounge proprietor Charles Ferri, are both planning to open new posh boites in the emirate.

In fact, I spoke with Mr. Ferri back in May about his Middle Eastern aspirations:

"Dubai is super important right now," he said. "We're looking to do a big, big club out there. They're basically flying me out there for a month."

The new venue would be located in a hotel, he added -- one of the few types of places the emirate permits booze.

On Monday night, the Trump Organization threw a lavish party in Midtown to celebrate the launch of its new Trump International Hotel & Tower in Dubai.

I wanted to know: How does the booming hotel market in Dubai compare to that of New York?

The dapper Donald Trump Jr. replied, "The high-end suites over there would be very comparable to the best you have in New York, and vice versa."

Fair enough. But what about bedbugs? Is the high-end Arab lodging scene just as prone to the nasty blood-sucking insects as the inns of Manhattan?

"Not that I’m aware of," the younger Trump said.  read more »

As the world’s best-known celebrity/activist power couple, Brangelina has forced paparazzi lenses to capture humanitarian crises worldwide, raising public awareness about issues like the plight of Iraqi refugees and AIDS in Africa.

Now that Mr. Pitt is working as a design consultant on an 800-room, “American-themed,” green hotel in Dubai, the 44-year-old actor may put the spotlight on the chronic exploitation of the estimated 700,000 workers powering the construction boom in the most real-estate-crazy of the United Arab Emirates.  read more »

Investors, their pockets bulging with foreign capital, will set down in Manhattan this September to eye local real estate investment opportunities, rub shoulders, and draw American investment overseas.

Cityscape -- the firm that put on a popular Dubai convention last year -- will host the the Cityscape USA exhibition on Sept. 10 and 11 at the Jacob Javits Center.  read more »

The first spinning skyscraper with individually rotating floors will soon rise on the increasingly crowded shores of Dubai, alongside the world's tallest building "the Burj" (tower in Arabic), the only full-sized indoor ski-slope, and countless other man-made construction marvels or monstrosities, depending on your perspective.

The neighboring, rival emirate, Abu Dhabi, announced plans for two rotating buildings before Dubai unveiled plans for the Dynamic Architecture building, but this is the first tower whose floors will twist separately (unnoticed by occupants), changing its appearance every five minutes. More importantly, the Dynamic Architecture building is also the first luxury building to be produced almost entirely in a factory, apart from the concrete core, according to the Web site. (An idea for New York, perhaps?)  read more »

The most ferocious investment firm of the last six months, Broadway Partners, is in contract to purc  read more »

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Good news for the folks at Billboard, Adweek and The Hollywood Reporter.  read more »

Up went the Manhattan commercial market in 2006, so much so that analysts now compare it to the boom year of 2000, one of the healthiest years ever for any American commercial market.

A new report from Cushman & Wakefield puts the Manhattan office vacancy rate at 6.7 percent at the end of last year, down from 8.4 percent at the end of 2005. The average asking rent for office space in the borough hit $50.56 a square foot, up nearly 25 percent from the end of 2005, and right below the all-time asking rent of $50.92 at the end of 2000.

The Cushman & Wakefield report, unveiled on Tuesday morning amid a bacon-egg-bagel breakfast at Midtown power eatery Michael's, also noted healthy growth in 2006 in the investment sales hotel, and retail markets of Manhattan.

Other notable nuggets in the report:

• There's no office space left for leasing in Greenwich Village or in Soho.
• Midtown South has the nation's second-lowest vacancy rate at 5.6 percent.
• There were 41 leases in 2006 with rents above $100 a foot, more than triple the number in '05.
• Average retail asking rents on prime Fifth Avenue in Midtown averaged $1,500 a foot in 2006.
• Foreign investors accounted for 15 percent of the investment sales of last year.
Release on the report after the jump.  read more »
- Tom Acitelli
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The Manhattan real-estate market can be as predictable as the changing of the years.    read more »

“You only get one shot at New York,” Gordon Ramsay told me when I interviewed him in London two  read more »

“You only get one shot at New York,” Gordon Ramsay told me when I interviewed him in Lon  read more »

It’s with a certain contempt that Manhattan’s developer class admits that among its most  read more »

• First, the happy news: this weekend the world was finally introduced to Key Magazine, which has a very shiny cover and lots of steamy info on "posh" Houston suburbs, Dubai villas, and the Chicago Mercantile Exchange. Plus, there's a Q&A that begins: "How do I pick the right material for my kitchen countertop?" (NYT Key)
• To commemorate 9/11, The Times gives us a 17,952-word wrap-up of the past half-decade at the the WTC. A choice sentence: "The combination of big money, prime real estate, bottomless grief, artistic ego and dreams of legacy transformed ground zero into a mosh pit." And what does Mayor Bloomberg think? "It is what it is." (New York Times)
• And about Mr. Bloomberg's pet plan for 165,000 new units of affordable housing within seven years: there's a bad break, and that bad break is officially called The Slowdown In The City's Real Estate Market. (Crain's Premium)
• Some fluffy Manhattan news on a non-fluffy day: the Daily News reports on the places that "manipulative New York bachelors" choose for dinner dates: there's Grand Street downtown, Rivington out East, Bond Street in Brooklyn... and the Meatpacking District. When will those bachelors ever learn? (NY Daily News)
- Max Abelson  read more »
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Trump Jr. talks to the fine folks at the Real Deal Podcast. Some highlights:

On New York: "If you want to build a two-story building, you're going to have someone fighting you saying 'it's too big.'

On 45-story Trump Soho: "The sight's expensive. Obviously everything in New York is trading at, you know, rather high multiples these days. So the site acquisition wasn't cheap, but I think the site location, the zoning that we have on the site, is going to allow us to build a project that really makes sense."

On residents' opposition: "I don't know what 'too tall' is. We live in New York City, so, I don't know if there's such a thing as 'too tall.' I think in that location it's very fitting, I think it makes a lot of sense for the product. People always say the best views are from Jersey, but we're going to have a lot of those views."

On money: "Ah, it'll be about a half a billion dollar project from a construction-cost standpoint, maybe a bit more."

On Dad: "He's really a builder. That's where he started, that's what he understands... He wasn't the kind of dad that took you and said 'let's go play catch.' That wasn't his thing. He wanted to talk about business. As a six year old, that may not be the easiest thing in the world."

On Dad, redux: "He'll fire us in a second."

On Dubai: "They're really pushing the envelope... These people, that are so cognizant of a brand, find a lot of value in Trump. From a real estate perspective, and from a salable real estate perspective, especially, you know, condominium. People like that idea of buying a product they know."

Amen.  read more »

- Max Abelson

The Palm Jumeirah, an artificial cluster of islands shaped like a date palm tree off the coast of Du  read more »

Having spent the last two weeks on a whistle-stop tour of American hotspots, I now have a very clear  read more »

Even by Chuck Schumer standards, there were a lot of cameras set up outside the Farley Post Office i  read more »

When Republican politicians get in trouble, their defense often includes one or both of the followin  read more »

Mke Bloomberg, evidently, doesn't have a particularly high opinion of Chuck Schumer's signature takedown of the Bush White House over the Dubai port deal.

Here's a fuller transcript from the Mayor's office (an earlier version had a rough transcript):

Mayor: I mean, come on. This is the cheapest political shot in the world. Everybody's rushing to say, ‘our ports.' It isn't like this hasn't been brewing for two decades. We have given up control of international ship transport. America has become a virtual non-entity. We don't run ports around the world, we don't run our own ports, we don't have American shipping carrying this. That was long ago given away and they're just discovering this? We do have security risks. I'm sympathetic to that. What I don't like is all of the sudden it becomes the issue de jour and everybody's rushing up there waving the flag, beating their chests saying ‘I'm trying to defend this country better than others.' What about funding the Coast Guard for the last couple of decades?

Asked to respond at a press conference today, Chuck was icy:

"I've talked to him three times this week," he said. "He didn't mention it once."

Full transcript after the jump.  read more »

George W. Bush will be up in Rochester Tuesday, part of that prescription drug tour that hasn't exactly succeeded in changing the subject from Iraq, Dubai, or anything else.

But New York State's Republican candates, of course, are flocking to be seen with their President, right? Not so much.

"Bush who?" joked one Republican campaign aide.

A number of other campaigns also wouldn't go on the record with their Tuesday plans or didn't get back to me, but here are those that did:

"Jeanine will be spending time with her kids during their spring break," says Pirro spokeswoman Anne Marie Corbalis.

"We haven't been asked and we will not be in Rochester on Tuesday," says Weld spokeswoman Andrea Tantaros.

"KT has meetings in a different part of the state on Tuesday, but would be very pleased to campaign with the President down the road," says McFarland spokesman Bill O'Reilly.

How fortunate that the opinion pages of our mightiest newspapers are open to diverse viewpoints.  read more »

When Washington politicians protest the purchase of American port facilities by an Arab company, it  read more »

Crain's is reporting that the AP is reporting that Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist wants the President to put on hold the takeover of New York's port operations by a Dubai-based company. -Matthew Schuerman

Whatever David Mamet has been smoking, I'll have a puff.  read more »