Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy wasted little time in locking in four of the five companies he promised would bring the state more jobs under his so-called “First Five” plan, an initiative launched this year with the intention of luring new companies to the Constitution State with incentives.
Read More
The demand for office space is New Jersey is considered “tepid” in a report by Cassidy Turley.
The Northern New Jersey office market ended the third quarter with a vacancy rate of 14.5 percent, a slight increase from the end of the second quarter. Office-market activity slowed in the third quarter, resulting in 339,408 square feet of negative absorption. Class B office space continues to account for the majority of negative absorption in the market, representing 92 percent of this quarter’s negative demand.
Read More
Before long, the Manhattan terminus of the No. 7 train will move west, from Times Square to the Hudson Yards on the far West Side. That’s good, but renewed talk of extending the subway line under the Hudson River to Secaucus in New Jersey is even better. Read More
Real Estate equity fund Multi-Employer Property Trust made New Jersey history yesterday when it announced it had purchased the Newport Tower in Jersey City, New Jersey for $377.5 million.
Read More
Hurricane Irene played matchmaker for the political odd couple of President Obama and New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. The potential 2012 rivals are unlikely allies in the debate over hurricane relief and they're spending an awkward afternoon together tomorrow touring flood damage in Paterson. Despite his repeated denials, Christie is viewed by many insiders as a Read More
Governor Chris Christie has gotten a lot right during his stormy first term as governor of New Jersey. He’s taken on public employee unions and gotten pension and benefits concessions that would have seemed impossible two years ago. He’s correctly identified the teachers’ union as a reactionary obstacle to genuine school reform.
There are times, however, when his outspoken, Jersey guy routine doesn’t serve him well. Like, for example, when he recently referred to the mayor of New York City as a “dictator” and—even worse, if you’re familiar with Yiddish—a “putz.” (The governor should consult a Yiddish-English dictionary before he channels his inner Jackie Mason.) Bear in mind that Mr. Christie considers Mike Bloomberg a friend. Imagine what he calls his enemies. Read More
On a recent morning in the fifth-floor conference room of the Metropolitan Transit Authority’s brick and limestone Madison Avenue headquarters, a public meeting of the board was called to order. The various members representing the audit, governance, bridges and tunnels, finance, and other committees listened patiently as Mark Shotkin, a member of the transit-riding Read More
The National Historical Park museum in Morristown, New Jersey, has learned that a letter that has been in its collection since the 1950's was not, in fact, written by the English Romantic poet Lord Byron, the Star-Ledger of Newark reports. "It was kind of a ‘wow’ item," Jude Pfister, the chief of cultural resources Read More
The hearts of a million North Jersey housewives were just broken.
Yesterday, the Post reported that Chicago's favorite daughter, Oprah Winfrey, was looking at a home in Alpine, America's ritziest zip code, according to Forbes. And not just any home but the $68 million mansion built by real estate investor Richard Kurtz, the most expensive Read More
Westward, ho... after all!
In the confusion following the disappearance of the ARC Tunnel last month, the biggest question seemed to be what would happen to the $3 billion the federal government had set aside for the trans-Hudson train tunnel, by certain measures the largest transportation project ever undertaken. Local politicians, including Mayor Bloomberg as Read More
Perhaps the Times truly has become a national newspaper. Why else would it write a wide-eyed story about the PATH train that reads like the work of a parachute journalist and not what it actually is, a silly feature by the paper's otherwise ace transit reporter:
It is New York's other subway, home to oddities Read More
"It's kind of American Psycho meets Eyes Wide Shut," mused the DJ at Natirar, the sprawling New Jersey estate currently owned by Sir Richard Branson, when The Observer asked him to describe his musical strategy for the masquerade ball held there on Saturday night. The evening's festivities--a high-black-tie masked gala benefiting the Susan G. Komen Read More
It looks like New Jersey Governor Chris Christie isn't the only one playing politics with mass transit funding. WNYC vet Andrea Bernstein had a fascinating yet terrifying--at least for transit geeks--report on Marketplace this morning about how a number of GOP gubernatorial candidates across the country have talked about killing off high-speed rail construction Read More
Let the ARC Tunnel obituaries resume.
When The Star-Ledger broke the news last month that New Jersey Governor Chris Christie was considering killing the $8.7 billion rail project, it led to weeks of hand-wringing speculation. When he confirmed the decision two weeks ago, Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood rushed up from Washington to try and get Read More
Planes Trains & Automobiles Funding
It has been a terrible week for mass transit, and somehow that just doesn't feel right. The Real Estate Desk thought this was supposed to be some golden age of shared streets and enlightened public officials. Apparently not.
The most obvious example is the new $104 MetroCards. But in case you missed Read More
