Steven Roth

No one ever said planning for a train station was cheap.

In a recent filing with the SEC, Vornado Realty Trust wrote off $23 million associated with the “abandonment” of the so-called Moynihan East portion of the Penn Station redevelopment plan.

Taken with planning for the expansion of the station into the Farley Post Office across the street, Vornado, led by Steve Roth, has spent $34.2 million, according to the filing:

The three months ended March 31, 2008 includes a $34,200,000 write-off for our share of two joint ventures’ pre-development costs, of which $23,000,000 represents our 50% share of costs in connection with the abandonment of the “arena move”/Moynihan East portions of the Farley project.

Given that Vornado is in a 50/50 partnership with the Related Companies for the project, the numbers reported by Vornado suggest that the two companies have spent nearly $70 million on the project since they were designated developers in 2005!  read more »

Developers Vornado Realty Trust and the Related Companies are grasping for options to keep alive a multibillion dollar redo of Penn Station and related real estate development, as they have asked the city and state to back a loan to build a new Madison Square Garden in the Farley Post Office across Eight Avenue.

The proposal is intended to lure the Garden back to the table, as the company, led by Chairman James Dolan, pulled out of the larger plan in March. The state is considering the offer as one of many options for the project, a state official confirmed.

In this option, the state and city could be saddled with the cost of the arena—said to be in the range of $900 million to $1 billion—should the larger redo of Penn Station ultimately fall apart.  read more »

With Merrill Lynch staying put downtown and plans to redevelop Penn Station in flux, Vornado CEO Steven Roth may not know what to do with the Hotel Pennsylvania--a building the company once described as "a placeholder, sort of like a parking lot."

In the meantime, the historic lodge continues to make his company some big bucks--netting roughly $37.9 million last year.

That's $10.6 million more than in 2006, according to the company's latest filing with federal regulators, which further added, "This property continues to trend higher in 2008."

With revenues on the rise, does it still make sense to raze it?  read more »

With the plans for a grand redo of Pennsylvania Station looking all but dead following Madison Square Garden’s announcement that it will renovate its existing arena rather than move to a new site, one of the developers central to the project has indicated his approval for a scaled-back version if the larger plan indeed fails.

“I am hopeful a scaled-back version and perhaps even a doubly scaled-back version will happen,” Vornado Realty Trust CEO Steve Roth wrote in a letter to investors that appeared in SEC filings yesterday. “In my view, there has been too much public endorsement of the idea of this project for nothing to happen.”  read more »

Hotel Pennsylvania preservationist Gregory Jones recently received a Valentine's Day greeting from the city's Landmarks Preservation Commission--er, more of a Dear John letter, really.

The message, dated Feb. 14, reads: "At this time, the property does not appear to meet the criteria for designation and will not be recommended to the full commission for further consideration as a New York City landmark."

Yet, Mr. Jones, who has spearheaded efforts to save the old hotel from possible demolition, remains undaunted: "We won't take no for an answer," he told The Observer via e-mail. "We will continue to find a new way of saving this hotel with or without the [commission's] help."

It’s official: midtown South has been annexed by midtown, as the prospect of billions in investment in Penn Station and some 7.5 million square feet in anticipated development by Steve Roth’s Vornado Realty Trust have convinced a major brokerage that things are changing along 34th Street.

CB Richard Ellis today announced that the Empire State Building, the Penn Plaza buildings and others in the area will now be included in the firm’s definition of “midtown.”

The move, which also stretched the boundaries to include the New York Times building on Eighth Avenue, puts about 17 million square feet of office space into midtown, according to CB Richard Ellis.

Press release after the jump.  read more »

Honestly, we haven't been reading much of The Press lately, ever since the cartoon debacle. But "The 50 Most Loathsome New Yorkers" issue remains a classic.

However, this year's list is quite different, with an influx of real estate big wigs. Bruce Ratner, Larry Silverstein, David Walentas, Shaya Boymelgreen, and Michael Shvo all make the list. Barbara Corcoran and Steven Roth--who were on last year's-- are spared.

Considering that none of these guy made the list in 2005, why are they now so loathesome in 2006? Perhaps, the ever-changing editorial team at The Press is now filled with more avid Curbed readers, rather than critics of downtown hipster DJs.

- Michael Calderone

The story on the Madison Square Garden flip in the current issue of the Observer showed how Steven Roth, chairman of Vornado, would win big if the deal goes through. We have since learned that the idea for moving the Garden goes all the way back to 2003, and that it wasn’t Roth who thought of it, at least according to one insider’s account, but rather two executives at the state economic development agency in charge of the redeveloping the Farley Post Office, the back end of which may one day make way for the arena.  read more »

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