The latest bad news at ground zero is that costs continue to mount for the rebuilding of the World Trade Center. A report that found costs rose 85 percent since the project began in 2006, to $14.8 billion, placed a great deal of responsibility for these cost overruns on prior leadership at the Port.
Yesterday, Mayor Bloomberg defended the Port's leadership and the importance of rebuilding, Read More
The frequent turnover at the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey’s top position has helped contribute to escalating costs at the yet-to-be-completed World Trade Center site, according to a committee report released yesterday.
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The Port Authority has just released the preliminary findings of its agency-wide review, the biggest, if least surprising, news of which is that the cost of redeveloping the World Trade Center continues to sky rocket. The price has risen from the $11 billion estimated in 2008 to a current estimate of $14.8 billion. That is almost twice as expensive as the project was initially expected to cost when first announced in 2006, with a price tag of $8 billion. Read More
This morning, upon further reflection, The Observer was prepared to retract last week's story about the negativity hanging over the World Trade Center site yet again. A reader had contacted us to say that it was a silly notion, considering that what had changed was something far more significant—rationality had come to the the project, replacing the emotions that had too long dominated the scene. Read More
As one of the original sons of Jack Resnick & Sons—the 84-year-old, family-owned development firm—Burton Resnick has steered the company to continued success while keeping it all in the family. The firm, which has more than five million square feet of office space under its purview, is now being led by Jonathan Resnick, Mr. Resnick’s son. But that hardly means Burton is out of the game. He still has plenty of buildings in need of a modern touch-up, fitting two of them—the Symphony House, at 235 West 56th Street, and 199 Water Street—with all the trappings of a modern building (Wi-Fi, generators, security systems, etc.). Mr. Resnick spoke to The Commercial Observer earlier this month about the joys and attendant challenges of updating a building for modern times.
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So maybe it wasn't a bombshell after all, the "news" yesterday that Larry Silverstein might not be able to finish 3 World Trade Center all the way, leaving it instead as a seven-story retail and mechanical stump for the time being. In a statement, the downtown don insists he will find a tenant, and he has about two years to do it before he must truly pull the trigger and decide to cap the tower or to keep building. Read More
Was last year magical for the World Trade Center site, or was it merely a mirage? The Observer has heard more than once of a sort of media blackout—promises of cooperation so as not to taint the 10th anniversary of 9/11 with the same backbiting, political infighting and constituent-driven trench warfare that had reigned almost since the towers fell.
Instead, there were celebratory milestones. One World Trade Center was finally skyrocketing toward heaven, putting up nearly a floor per week. Condé Nast signed its game-changing lease for half of said tower. Governor Andrew Cuomo announced an agreement with the long-suffering Greek Orthodox Church. And of course, the 9/11 Memorial opened on time, and quite a bit further along than originally hoped. The city was triumphant.
Was that real progress, though, or simply a one-year reprieve out of respect for the dead? With the exception of last week’s news that Condé would be taking additional space at 1 WTC, the bad news has been piling up all year. Read More
Chris Ward, the former New York head of the Port Authority, is stepping into a new role, as an executive vice president of the large international construction company Dragados.
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While Mayor Bloomberg and Governor Cuomo fight over the fate of the 9/11 museum, which almost certainly won't open as planned on September 11, 2012, the 9/11 Memorial Foundation quietly announced some good news at the end of December. The foundation has selected a five-member board for the still very much up in the air ground zero cultural center.
The move is largely logistical, according to Downtown Express, which first reported the arrangement. If a board had not been selected, the project would have forfeited $100 million in funds from the essentially defunct LMDC. Read More
On Monday, The Observer was atop the Standard for the launch party of ASAP. Dizzy with champagne, we did a double-take while waiting for the elevator on our way out. It was not the booze, but indeed the World Trade Center had been lit up for the holidays, just like last year. Now, with Read More
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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In September, retail brokerage veteran Patrick Breslin joined Studley as executive vice president of East Coast Retail Services, a division that, until now, the international real estate firm never had reason to focus on. The former president of Grubb & Ellis’s U.S. retail division and a retail broker at CBRE, Mr. Breslin, 50, spoke about his strategy at the International Council of Shopping Centers this week, his goals for Studley’s new East Coast Retail division and father Jimmy Breslin’s views on commercial real estate.
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If the lingering after effects of the recession and Manhattan’s already arduous construction environment weren’t challenging enough to builders in the city, the Department of Transportation’s annual holiday construction embargo is about take effect.
Starting tomorrow and in effect through January 2, 2012, the rules prohibit construction projects from blocking streets and walkways in various areas of the city, including 30th to 60th Streets river to river in midtown.
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We always kind of knew this intuitively, but The Architect's Newspaper did a really nice job of putting World Trade Center retail into perspective. Read More
Attendance at the newly opened 9/11 memorial has been underwhelming, to say the least. Despite the millions of dollars that went into the project, over 30% of people who have reserved tickets to visit the site in recent months have failed to show, DNAinfo reports.
It's not all bad news, though. Despite the AWOL ticket holders, tens of thousands of people are still visiting the site each week. Read More
