The New York Observer » GM Building

Hip to Be Square: How Harry Macklowe and Steve Jobs Built the Iconic Apple Cube

It is a POPS done right.

The Apple Cube on Fifth Avenue managed to transform a windswept plaza at one of the busiest intersections in Manhattan into a destination known the world over—one that became a shrine to its creator when Steve Jobs passed away earlier this week. The Journal's Eliot Brown (an Observer alum!) talked with reclusive developer Harry Macklowe about how the cube came to be. Like all things Apple, it wasn't his idea but Jobs'. Read More

Advantage, Landlords: Bell Tolls for Prospective Tenants in Midtown Trophies

For a while there, the cost of Class A office space in New York was tumbling amid thousands of layoffs, the Great Recession, cats and dogs living together, etc. Landlords were having to concede incentives like free rent and comped upgrades; and tenants were jumping at deals in addresses that in frothier times had higher barriers of entry.

That appears to have changed. Read More

Gilding the Lobby Lily

The frugality fad is fading fast.

Bidders are dropping multimillions on Warhols at Sotheby’s; Goldman Sachs wives are preparing holiday shopping extravaganzas in anticipation of record bonuses; and in the realm of commercial real estate, tenants are spending more than $100 a square foot on office space (in which to hang their newly acquired artwork?).

Right Read More

G.M. Building Won’t Be G.M. Building Anymore, Maybe

The G.M. Building is getting a new name. Or it might be, as Dana Rubinstein reports this morning.

A month after he announced that the beleaguered automaker would stay in its namesake building, Boston Properties chair Mort Zuckerman said last week that his company had recaptured the right to re-name the iconic building as part Read More

GM Building Naming Rights Officially Up for Grabs

The naming rights for the GM Building, one of the rarest opportunities in New York real estate, are officially in play.

During last week's third-quarter investors call, Boston Properties president Douglas Linde included in his prepared remarks the following: "We can report that we were able to retain General Motors in 114,000 square feet for 10 years at 767 Read More

GM Building Naming Rights Officially Up for Grabs

The naming rights for the GM Building, one of the rarest opportunities in New York real estate, are officially in play.

GM Picks GM Building

General Motors’ torturous search for a new home in New York City has finally reached an end. And, oh, what an anticlimactic end it is.

General Motors has signed a 114,300-square-foot, 10-year lease renewal at, you guessed it, Boston Properties’ General Motors Building, at 767 Fifth Avenue, the white-marble shaft that has borne its name since Read More

The 10 Most Expensive Buildings, Revisited

In April 2007, during those blindered days of economic bluster, The Observer published an article naming New York’s 10 most expensive towers, according to prominent real estate professionals. They agreed on the most valuable single building: the GM Building. That rocket of marble and black glass, considered then and now the most coveted skyscraper Read More

GM Officially Kills Lease at Citigroup Center

Thank God for bankruptcy! By declaring Chapter 11, General Motors has been allowed to officially reject its 120,000-square-foot lease at the sublimely modernist 601 Lexington Avenue (better, if formerly, known as the Citigroup Center).

Mort Zuckerman's Boston Properties, which owns the stunning rascacielos, revealed the news in its second quarter earnings report:

On June 1, 2009, Read More

Screech! GM May Stay Put at GM Building, Nix New York Office Move to 601 Lex

You know what they say about the best-laid schemes o’ mice and men? It turns out the benighted General Motors Corporation may keep its New York headquarters at the eponymous GM Building after all.

GM is in negotiations with Mort Zuckerman and Ed Linde’s Boston Properties to renew its lease at the GM Building at 767 Read More

Retail Power Brokering, 2009

Last month, Robert Futterman, one of the most prominent and powerful names in Manhattan retail, sent out a press release touting his venerable eponymous brokerage’s latest blockbuster deal: “a 525-square-foot lease with Joe - The Art of Coffee at 514 Columbus Avenue.”

If square footage isn’t your vernacular, that’s about the Read More

Grand Slam! No More $1K a Foot For Trophies
At some particularly fantastical point in the run-up to the commercial real estate implosion, it became commonplace for one square foot of high-end office space in Manhattan to sell for $1,000. Put another way, one square inch of space—barely enough room to accommodate a buyer’s little toe—would sell for $6.94.
In June 2006, the Read More

’08 Greatest Hits: The GM Building Sale
It's New Year's Eve. Time to take stock of the biggest happenings in New York real estate in '08. The first of many today from The Observer's archives.
June 10, 2008
Zuckerman Exhales: GM Building Deal Closes
“I got great sleep last night,” Mort Zuckerman said on Tuesday afternoon, the day after he and his Read More

Shine Off Trophy Tower Asking Rents
No tower is immune from the ravages of the ever deepening economic collapse. Not even Manhattan’s so-called trophy towers, known as such because their outrageous prestige and sky-high rents render them must-have items among top investors.
So concludes Jones Lang LaSalle, which gave The Observer its most recent, and still unreleased, 2008 Skyline Review. Read More

Report: 9 West 57th, GM Building Lone Hold-Outs on Incentives

From The Real Deal: "Nearly every building in the city, perhaps with the exception of 9 West 57th Street and the General Motors Building, is offering incentives to tenants. They include additional periods of free rent and higher tenant improvement allowances. The stars are aligned for a bleak office leasing market for at least Read More