Tishman Speyer

A day after the M.T.A.’s West Side rail yards deal with Tishman Speyer Properties was officially declared dead, Mayor Bloomberg today pointed to the gubernatorial roller coaster in Albany to explain the troubles for his economic development agenda.

“The chaos in Albany was not good for us,” he told reporters. “I’m not disparaging what they were trying to do, it’s just that when you change administrations, it does slow things down, and nobody expected when the administration changed a year and a third ago, that a year and a third later, they would go through the same process.”

This is a tune the mayor has been singing for a few days now—in London, he was more explicit, saying, “When Eliot Spitzer came in, he basically stopped every project that the Pataki administration negotiated, saying he wanted to look at it.”  read more »

Big news from the M.T.A. via a statement. After Tishman Speyer tried over the weekend and in the past two days to revive talks, the state agency has officially stopped discussions and is opening up talks again with other developers.

From M.T.A. spokesman Jeremy Soffin:

The MTA met today with Tishman Speyer. Despite the best efforts of both sides, a final agreement could not be reached. The MTA has now re-entered discussions with other interested developers and remains committed to timely development of these unique and valuable parcels of land on Manhattan's Far West Side.

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The deal for billions of dollars worth of development over the West Side rail yards collapsed Thursday afternoon, with the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and Tishman Speyer hitting an impasse in negotiations. The failure to reach a deal came more than five weeks after the M.T.A. announced Tishman Speyer as the winner of the development rights, after a months-long bidding contest between six of the city’s largest development firms.

According to a statement from the M.T.A., the failure to complete the deal came as Tishman Speyer refused to close on the agreement for the eastern half of the rail yards until the western half was rezoned, a process that could easily take until late 2009, if not 2010. The accord reached in late March held that Tishman would close on the eastern half; then, after the western half was rezoned, they would close the deal on that section, completing the deal. The total deal was estimated to bring the M.T.A. about $1 billion from Tishman.

The collapse in talks came one day after the M.T.A. passed a self-imposed seven-day deadline to finish negotiations and sign a conditional letter of designation, a document that was not signed when Tishman won the bidding. Officials said at the time of that announcement, in late March, that they were highly confident a final deal would be reached, characterizing the designation letter as something of a formality.  read more »

Five weeks after Tishman Speyer was announced the winner of the West Side rail yards, negotiations are still unfinished between Tishman, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and the city, an M.T.A. spokesman confirmed.

The parties yesterday missed a seven-day deadline set by the M.T.A. at its board meeting last week, with the final details of a conditional letter of designation yet to be finalized.  read more »

Tishman Speyer, the newly-chosen developers of the West Side rail yards, would like to eliminate the northernmost spur of the High Line.

Friends of the High Line president and co-founder Robert Hammond doesn't believe it's going to happen—after all, he's already overcome seemingly insurmountable obstacles in the conversion of the elevated railway into a new city park.

When he first went to Mayor Bloomberg, he said, "The Mayor said 'Don't show us pretty pictures. We've got enough parks, we can't pay for them all.'"

So Hammond showed the city it could make money off the High Line—or at least, property owners in West Chelsea could and some other money would trickle down.

"I've seen this movie before," Hammond said today of Tishman Speyer's plans, speaking at the 2nd Annual Trends in New York City Land Use and Real Estate Development conference down at New York Law School this afternoon. "I think we'll get the whole Line," he said.  read more »

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority and Tishman Speyer have missed their first deadline in the project to develop the West Side rail yards, as the date for the MTA to officially designate Tishman Speyer as the developer has come and gone.  read more »

Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer, Assemblyman Brian Kavanagh, Councilman Dan Garodnick, and assorted community groups are hosting a town hall meeting on Thursday evening to discuss the issues facing Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village residents.

The non-renewal notices from landlord Tishman Speyer that are allegedly flooding the mailboxes of both legal and illegal rent-stabilized tenants will be on the agenda; so will rent protection for market-rate tenants, roof improvements, and development concerns for the Con Edison site along First Avenue, according to a release issued today.  read more »

Above is a rendering of some of the 13 acres of public space in Tishman Speyer's winning West Side rail yards bid. Here's some more.

If there is anything to be learned from the moves and actions of the Speyer family over the past few years, it is that its members have a penchant for high-profile trophy properties; they have no qualms about aggressively engaging in mega-deals for the city’s largest sales; they can win out in tough contests; and they sell buildings for tremendous returns.

The Tishman Speyer kingdom, already extending to more than a dozen U.S. cities and three continents, will now raise a flag on the far West Side of Manhattan. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority yesterday declared the longtime New York real estate firm the developer and owner-to-be of its 26-acre rail yards, Manhattan’s largest chunk of undeveloped real estate, bounded by 11th and 12th avenues, and 30th and 33rd streets. [See our coverage from Wednesday here, here, here, and here.]

Now the fate of the West Side rests in large part in the Speyers' hands, as officials and real estate executives say the successful creation of a new business district a few avenues west of America’s largest central business district depends on the development of the rail yards, long eyed as the site for something other than open air.  read more »

A few statements from various politicians and organizations, including Friends of the High Line and State Senator Tom Duane, about the selection of Tishman Speyer as developer of the 26-acre West Side rail yards:  read more »

In the beginning, there were five teams that included the city's biggest developers vying for the West Side rail yards. Today, the board of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the yards' owner, voted to negotiate solely with Tishman Speyer over acquiring and developing the 26-acre site.

Gary Dellaverson, the MTA's CFO, talked at today's board meeting about the bidding that was closely watched for months even though few people beyond those directly involved knew what was really going on. According to Mr. Dellaverson and an MTA summary handed out to board members:  read more »

Maybe it’s best to keep the champagne on ice just for a few more days.

There’s a bit more work to be done on the deal between the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and Tishman Speyer over the West Side rail yards, as the MTA did not give, as it once planned to, a “conditional letter of designation” to Tishman today for the deal. With some final details yet to be ironed out, that designation comes in the next 14 days, to be followed by a contract within 120 days after that.  read more »

It's quite a real estate empire the Speyers now have. When they get done building 10 million square feet of office space and 3 million square feet of residential on the West Side rail yards, they can add that to the following massive trophies:

Stuyvesant Town and Cooper Village, the Manhattan apartment complexes Tishman Speyer and junior partners acquired in late 2006 for the record price of $5.4 billion. The complexes have 110 buildings total with over 11,200 apartments, many of which are moving toward market-rate.  read more »

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As expected, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority has selected Tishman Speyer to develop the West Side rail yards. We'll have more on this later in the day.

My colleague Eliot Brown has a story in today's paper about the next steps for Tishman Speyer in developing the 26-acre site.

As The Observer noted in November, Tishman Speyer's West Side rail yards bid leans more heavily commercial than any of the others. Its original bid had 3,000 apartments and 10 million square feet of office space. That office space component may have dwindled as Tishman Speyer lost Morgan Stanley as an anchor tenant earlier this year.

A developer for the West Side rail yards could be selected as early as tonight, with Tishman Speyer and a venture between the Durst Organization and Vornado Realty Trust leading the field, according to two people familiar with discussions.  read more »

The daughter of Jerry Speyer, Tishman Speyer's chief and the 605th richest man in the world (alongside Sheldon Solow), according to Forbes' 2008 list, has bought a $12 million co-op at 888 Park Avenue, city records show.

Holly S. Lipton, the vice president of GSC Partners Capital Group, won’t be straying far from her old digs on East 87th Street when she moves into the fourth-floor unit on 78th and Park.  read more »

Despite the national housing market crisis and some serious global competition, Manhattan real estate moguls maintained a commanding presence in the billionaires club in 2008, according to Forbes’ annual list.

Donald Trump fell from No. 314 in 2007 to 368 this year with a net worth of $3 billion. The founder of Related Companies, Stephen Ross, jumped from No.  read more »

The Tishman Speyer plan looks, in comparison to Extell’s eclecticism or Brookfield’s urbanism, downright conservative (or, if you prefer, stately). It is not enormously high (about 1,000 feet), and is almost perfectly symmetrical along an east-west axis. The towers grow progressively smaller as they move to the west.

Its edge comes from the money behind it: the Speyers joined up with Morgan Stanley in a 50-50 partnership, and the investment bank will own its own 3-million-square-foot building. That’s the one in the right rear in the above picture. The fountain area is called “The Forum”; in the foreground stands what Tishman-Speyer/Morgan Stanley is calling “The New York Steps.”

Having a bank as a main tenant is nothing like having an international, multimedia company around, nor even a sexy magazine publisher, but maybe that’s what people are talking about when they compare the greater Hudson Yards neighborhood to Canary Wharf in London. With just 3,000 apartments (300 of which are affordable) and 10 million square feet of office, Tishman Speyer’s proposal leans more heavily commercial than any of the others. Despite the fact that financial firms work around the clock, somehow this bid does not seem like it will do much for the nightlife along the Hudson.

The designer, Helmut Jahn, has done sweeping statements for Jerry Speyer before--consider the Sony Center in Berlin--and maybe he will here again, after the bid gets through committee.

“We think that by having our tenant and partner pretty much guarantees the success of the project,” Mr. Speyer said. “We have a tenant. We have the capital. We’re ready to buy the land and to do what needs to be done.”

A partnership of Tishman Speyer and Lehman Brothers finished gobbling up apartment landlord Archstone-Smith earlier this month, and city records yesterday revealed the Manhattan and Brooklyn buildings involved in the takeover:

• 250 West 50th Street
• 245 East 40th Street
• 505 West 54th Street
• 303 East 83rd Street
• 750 Columbus Avenue
• 730 Columbus Avenue
• 510 West 52nd Street
• 515 West 52nd Street
• 180 Montague Street (Brooklyn)

Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation has joined Stephen Ross's Related Companies in its bid for the Hudson Yards project, a source familiar with the bid said.

If Stephen Ross' Related won the bid to develop on the far West Side, News Corp. would move its headquarters from its Sixth Avenue tower and into a new tower in Hudson Yards, the source said. Last week, The Observer reported that Conde Nast would leave 4 Times Square for a new, 1.5-million-square-foot tower if Douglas Durst and Vornado won a bid; and it was also reported that Morgan Stanley had teamed up with Tishman Speyer.  read more »

One of the biggest real estate deals ever is over. A partnership of Tishman Speyer and Lehman Brothers has finished acquiring real estate investment trust Archstone-Smith in a $22.2 billion deal. It's the biggest public-to-private acquisition ever in the apartment REIT sector.

As The Observer reported in May, the Archstone portfolio included at least 10 apartment buildings in Manhattan and Brooklyn. Those apartments--unlike the stabilized ones in Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village, which another Tishman Speyer-led partnership purchased--are market-rate.

On the heels of their $22 billion buy of Archstone-Smith, Jerry and Rob Speyer have made another blockbuster deal. Tishman Speyer has purchased several floors at 30 Rockefeller Plaza back from NBC for $222 million.

Jerry and Rob, the father-and-son duo that run Tishman Speyer, own the iconic 70-story 30 Rock, in addition to all 12 buildings at Rockefeller Center. NBC bought the 1.6 million square feet it occupies at 30 Rock from the Speyers in 1996.  read more »

Four times more expensive than the Stuy Town deal, it’s the largest deal in Tishman Speyer’s history.  read more »

In one of the biggest real estate deals ever, Tishman Speyer and Lehman Brothers have bought Archstone-Smith, the real estate investment trust that owns more than 86,000 apartments nationwide. The $22.2 billion acquisition includes at least 10 buildings in Manhattan and Brooklyn. It's the largest such public-to-private acquisition ever among apartment REITs.

For Tishman Speyer, the acquisition may be a welcome change. The company bought Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village in 2006 for more than $5 billion, but most of the apartments in those complexes are protected from market-rate rents by government controls. Not so with the Archstone-Smith apartments. One-bedrooms in the Archstone 39th start now at $4,475 a month; in the Archstone 101 West End, a studio can run toward $2,900 a month.

More on this record deal in tomorrow's print edition of The Observer.  read more »