Commercial Real Estate | The New York Observer

The Reformed Accountant

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 16:53:27 -0400

When August DiRenzo reported to legendary Cushman & Wakefield honcho Jim Peters on his first day of work as a broker in the mid-1960s, the upstart asked a simple question.

“O.K., what do I do?”

“Look out the window,” said Mr. Peters, peering from his Cushman office tower, then located on Madison Avenue, 13 blocks south of its current headquarters. “What do you see?”

“Buildings,” answered Mr. DiRenzo, surveying the soaring edifices on 40th Street, many of...

Commercial Mortgage Defaults Have Another Year Before Bottoming Out, Report Says

Wed, 02 Sep 2009 17:20:30 -0400

If you work in commercial real estate, best to forget all that talk about an imminent economic recovery. The sad truth is that while the rest of the economy shows early signs of improvement, commercial real estate is proving the laggard.

Data released by research firm Real Estate Econometrics indicates that, nationwide, commercial and multifamily mortgage defaults will peak sometime around 2010 or 2011. The thing is, that peak will look more like...

The Rise and Falling of New York's Busiest Building Buyer

Mon, 17 Aug 2009 11:50:54 -0400

Two years ago, Broadway Partners was an empire on the march.

They owned some of the country’s best Class A office properties—the 62-story Aon Center in Los Angeles, One City Centre in Houston, 522 Fifth Avenue in New York—but they were always searching for more. Led by founder and CEO Scott Lawlor, the faster their real estate empire grew, the faster Broadway scrambled to conquer even more office buildings from California to New ...

New York’s Most Exclusive Office Building

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 14:59:57 -0400

In the late 17th and early 18th centuries, the Gobelins manufactory wove tapestries for Louis XIV, the absolutist French ruler, who espoused the theory of the divine right of kings. According to that theory, dauphins were not merely born lucky onto plush velvet thrones of ungodly wealth and power. No, they actually carried the mark, indeed the ordination, of the divine.

In the 21st century, you can walk up Madison Avenue, turn right onto 61st...

Bearish Before It Was Cool

Tue, 11 Aug 2009 11:13:06 -0400

Location: Do you ever get bored waiting for the market to recover?
Mr. Kuhn: God, this is great! I don’t get bored waiting for the market to recover. I go look for opportunities! This is the greatest mining time we’ve had in the last 10 years. … And if you’re a tenant-rep broker, and I’m not, tenants now feel the market is at the bottom. I think the economic statistics indicate we’ve sort...

Madison Avenue Retail Rents Plunge

Fri, 07 Aug 2009 13:38:50 -0400

Manhattan retail rents continued to fall in the first half of 2009, according to a report from CB Richard Ellis, reflecting an “ongoing weakness” that appears to be affecting retailers toward the higher end more than shops targeted to bargain hunters.

The toniest stretch of Madison Avenue, from 57th to 72nd streets, was the hardest hit. Average retail asking rents have declined 31.12 percent since the fourth quarter of 2008: from $1,087 per square...

TIAA-CREF Steps In on $145 M. Refinancing for SL Green's Graybar Building

Wed, 05 Aug 2009 14:46:58 -0400

TIAA-CREF—the professors’ insurance company—has provided $145 million in loans for the Graybar Building, SL Green’s midtown trophy at 420 Lexington Avenue, atop Grand Central Station. It refinanced $100 million in loans and provided an additional $45 million, producing approximately $23 million in net cash proceeds.

SL Green acquired a leasehold for the 31-story, 1.5-million-square-foot, Class A building in 1999. It also took in several loans, two of which were quite hefty: $35 million from...

Where the Elle Is Hachette Moving?

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 15:05:09 -0400

A mere five months after the New York Post reported that magazine giant Hachette Filipacchi might try to save on rent by leaving 1633 Broadway for more austere, smaller digs, Hachette has begun to narrow its options, according to a source familiar with the Elle publisher’s office hunt.

Hachette has about 280,000 square feet at its current location, but is on the market for something less than 250,000.

Among the options it’s considering: staying put at...

UBS? More Like U B Our Subtenant!

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 11:35:31 -0400

Switzerland’s largest bank—which this week posted an incredible $1.3 billion loss, its third consecutive quarter of waning profits—continues to shed excess office space in Manhattan.

Last week, UBS sublet 28,000 square feet at 299 Park Avenue to a firm called MarketAxess, which, according to its Web site, trades in exotic instruments like “emerging markets bonds” and “credit default swaps” for institutional investors.

This comes less than two weeks after law firm Orrick Herrington signed a lease...

Top Nonprofit Looks to Leave Silverstein for Chetrit

Tue, 04 Aug 2009 10:58:10 -0400

Poor Larry Silverstein. First the World Trade Center debacle. Now this.

The Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, which Silverstein Properties’ Web site touts as a marquee tenant at the nonprofit-heavy Art Deco masterpiece of a building at 120 Wall Street, has a lease out with a competing landlord.

The foundation, which specializes in funding research to cure Type 1 Diabetes (as the foundation’s name suggests, that’s the kind that tends to afflict children), has a lease out...

Weather at Distressed Investing Conference: Mostly Cloudy

Thu, 30 Jul 2009 08:40:08 -0400

As a thunderstorm raged outside, the mood of dozens of real estate investors at Wednesday’s Distressed Investing Leaders Forum at One World Financial Center was that of general gloom.

“The most optimistic thing I heard today is we won’t be like Japan. It won’t be 20 years,” said Jan Jekielek, the Epoch Times’ director of human resources. “What the Fed did now, it took [the Japanese] six to seven years to do.”

D.C. Lobbyist Patton Boggs Doubles New York Office

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 14:13:43 -0400

Patton Boggs, the venerable D.C. lobbying and law firm, has doubled the size of its New York office at 1185 Avenue of the Americas, signing a new, 60,000-square-foot sublease for a term of five years, with an option to extend.

It’s good news for SL Green, which owns the so-called Stevens Tower, all steel and glass and vertical lines topping out at the 42nd floor. Mark Weiss of Newmark Knight Frank represented Patton Boggs, and...

The Recession Hotels

Tue, 28 Jul 2009 12:52:31 -0400

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The Busiest Man in New York Real Estate

Tue, 21 Jul 2009 19:34:16 -0400

Gary Barnett wrote a letter. It was nine paragraphs and it circulated earlier this year to people like Michael Bloomberg, David Axelrod and Larry Summers.

“Even someone with a good job today is afraid to spend, because he is afraid he will not have a job a few months down the road.”

Mr. Barnett, the prolific president of development concern Extell, then offered a policy prescription for encouraging business amid what was just...

Minskoff vs. Contractors at 101 Warren: It's Complicated

Fri, 17 Jul 2009 15:53:52 -0400

The lawsuit between Edward J. Minskoff Equities and a contractor over mechanic’s liens for the luxury mixed-use condo at 101 Warren Street is not going that well for Minskoff.

A handwritten judicial decision filed on Wednesday has denied Minskoff’s request for the New York Supreme Court to dismiss the 62 mechanic’s liens that HRH Construction filed against the developer in February. The case will continue under the original suit that HRH filed against Minskoff.

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