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Related Companies

2 By Matt Chaban 1/31 5:19pm

Starchitects

Frank Gehry at the Podium2--Credit to William Alatriste New York City Council

Term Limits: Mayor Bloomberg Wants 10 New Gehry Buildings in Two Years

Mayor Bloomberg has set an ambitious agenda for his final two years in office. No, not finally fixing the schools, reforming the pensions or redeveloping Willets Point. Those are the easy ones.

“You should know that Frank and I had a conversation backstage,” the mayor said at the opening of the Signature Theater today, “and we both committed to each other that we would get 10 more Frank Gehry projects going here—in the next 700 days. If my math is any good, Frank, that is one every 70 days, so we should meet some time later today to get going.”

New York has actually faired quite well in the Frank Gehry department. Read More

By Robert Sammons 1/31 3:01pm

Stat of the Week

stat

Stat of the Week: 82

The number of Manhattan buildings with at least 100,000 square feet of (potential) availability (contiguous or noncontiguous) has climbed over the past year to 82 from 77, though it is down from 84 two years ago. The figures quoted are a catch-all including space currently vacant, known to have a tenant moving out or that is new construction with a completion date.


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By Michael Ewing 1/31 10:43am

Walmart Wars

A brownstone Walmart? (WWD)

Is Walmart’s Time Running Out for a New York Store?

The Walmart saga continues as it tries to open in New York yet again. Despite Walmart's frugal lunch policy, the company has poured millions of dollars on New York City programs and charities over recent years to garner support. They mass-mailed residents last spring claiming that "Walmart wants to come to New York City and New York City wants Walmart." Rightfully so, a clear majority of New Yorkers want Walmart.

But is time running out? Read More

By Matt Chaban 1/20 6:20pm

Greensward

Think of the children! (Save Ruppert Park)

Time Out! Speaker Quinn Wants a Closer Look at Related’s Ruppert Playground Plan

Upper Upper East Side residents have been locked in a development death match with The Related Companies for a few months now, ever since the company decided to exercise its right to build a residential tower on the site of a playground it has maintained for the past 25 years. Actually, 28 years.

Recently, Related decided to close Ruppert Playground, but the community is fighting back because there are no immediate plans to redevelop the site. Rather than let Related take its ball and go home, though, Council Speaker Christine Quinn has stepped up to the plate and potentially throwing up some hurdles that could bring greater oversight, and possibly concessions, to the site. Read More

By Daniel Geiger 12/07/11 2:00pm

ICSC

red ICSC cover FOR WEB

The White Whale of West 57th Street: Nordstrom appears poised for NYC

It’s the great white whale of Manhattan retail.

Aside from Walmart, Nordstrom is the store every retail broker in the city dreams of harpooning and reeling into a new home. One prominent broker familiar with the store, the amount of space it needs and the rents it would probably be willing to pay estimates that the commission for handling its lease would be around $10 million.

But like a leviathan lurking beneath the waves, the department store has offered only fleeting glimpses around the city, most notably at several development sites and a few existing assets with the capacity to accommodate its sprawling footprint.

The scuttlebutt nowadays: Nordstrom is contemplating one of two leases, one at the West Side rail yards with the Related Companies or another at the base of Extell Development’s soaring new residential tower now rising at 157 West 57th Street.



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By Daniel Edward Rosen 12/07/11 1:00pm

Whale Watch

The Category Killer.

Wooing Walmart: NYC brokers still have eyes for elusive retailer

The weekly phone calls. The dinner invites. The gifts.

When representatives from Walmart, the nation’s largest retailer, waltz into the New York Hilton for this year’s two-day International Council of Shopping Centers conference, many of the city’s most intrepid retail brokers will be close behind them, perhaps even plying those officials with compliments, dinner invitations and business opportunities.

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1 By Matt Chaban 11/01/11 2:37pm

Dizzying Designs

11 Photos

Hudson Yard_Aerial from south

Coach Moving Into the Twin Peaks of Hudson Yards [Pics]

Coach has come to Hudson Yards and classed up the joint as only a luxury bag maker could. Not only did the mayor make the company's lease official today, flanked by Council Speaker Christine Quinn and Related's Steve Ross, he announced that following the fashion house's move would be Fashion Week itself, he hopes. They could ride the 7-Train over from Bryant Park, as it was also promised that the extension would be completed as promised by 2013.

But we know what you really care about, the tantalizing new renderings from KPF, who is planning the site and building the two eastern most office towers, the first of which will be home to Coach and open in 2015—full of other firms, too, if you're in the market. Related is still looking to fill, oh, 25.4 million square feet here and there. Read More

2 By Matt Chaban 10/31/11 10:34am

Greensward

NIMP! Not in my playground. (NYC Parks Advocates)

Related Irradiates Ruppert Playground to Win Over Pols

As The Observer recently chronicled, the East Side of Manhattan is so starved for parkland, locals will do just about anything to hold onto every blade of grass and monkey bar. At Ruppert Playground, neighbors have been fighting the powerful Related Companies, which is preparing to replace the open space with a new apartment tower possibly reaching 40 stories.

The developer has every right to do so, as it built the playground three decades ago and only had to keep it open through 2008. This has not kept those on the block and their elected officials from fighting the plan, but now Related seems to have found its secret weapon: photon rays! Read More

By Matt Chaban 10/26/11 10:34am

Checking in

The two towers, back from the dead. (Pay a Visit)

There Will Be a Clocktower Hotel After All, With Ian Schrager Ringing the Bell

The Observer is not sure which is worse: a Tommy Hilfiger-themed hotel or just another blasé Marriott. The fashion designer had planned to tranform the Madison Square icon into a red-white-and-blue boutique hotel before he backed out. A plan to turn the landmark into condos already failed, but the owners have found a new buyer who still wants a hotel overlooking Shake Shack. Read More

1 By Matt Chaban 10/11/11 11:00pm

Greensward

Idyllic. (Geoffrey Croft/NYC Park Advocates)

Park Life: The East Side’s Landless Gentry Fight for Every Scrap of Open Space

Think of the perfect Saturday on the East Side. Brunch with your friends and the kids at, say, Fig & Olive, Artisinal or—the mayor’s favorite—Viand. Maybe a stroll along Madison for a little shopping and errands, and then off to Central Park to let the little ones wear themselves out before a nap. Or maybe it’s the other way around, soccer and softball in the park, a little tennis with friends or just some sunning on one of the lawns, then a late lunch.

Living East of Eden sure can be nice, but just like Adam and Eve, it always seems like there is more outside the garden gates.

Not satisfied with their proximity to one of the loveliest parks in the world, East Siders have been lobbying for decades for more leisure land, particularly along the river. They look jealously on at their West Side brethren, with Riveside Park and Hudson River Park—and even the green shoots along the Brooklyn and Queens waterfront. Thanks to rampant development, from Robert Moses’ FDR Drive up through the Bloomberg Building on 59th and Lexington, the East Side has grown more crowded every day, and yet access to the water, a mere mile away, has been all but impossible. Read More

2 By Matt Chaban 9/22/11 5:38pm

Westward Expansion

Little help? (Related Companies)

Go West, Old Men! Nine Firms Vying for Huge Hudson Yards Leases

It took decades for the New York Coliseum to be torn down and replaced by the Related Companies' Time Warner Center. While most of that time it was a different developer trying to build the damn thing, the fact remains, Related's president Jeff Blau has his work cut out for him. "At Hudson Yards, we're looking at about 2.5-times the Time Warner in that first phase, and the key to getting financing will be getting the office space leased," Mr. Blau said yesterday at the Masters of Real Estate panel hosted by The Observer.

Until he can find tenants for at least a portion of the 4.5 million square feet of office space planned at the megaproject, it will be all but impossible for Mr. Blau to start building. That had been a challenge ever since the economy collapsed in late 2008, not long after Related won the bid to redevelop the rail yards—O.K., so that deal wasn't finalized until 16 months ago, but whose counting—but Mr. Blau said the firm had seen a surge in interest in the past six months, and there are now nine companies actively looking at relocating into offices at Hudson Yards, and they are all looking at leases over a million square feet. Read More