The Real Deal - New York Real Estate News

From the November issue: A roundup of news and data on the commercial market.

What will $100 million buy you at the Crown Building? Five floors of penthouse living with a show kitchen, piano lounge, two swimming pools and a full-floor master suite, according to floor plans. The “crown” of the building — which is being converted into a condominium and an Aman-branded hotel by Russian developer Vladislav Doronin — will span nearly 14,000 square feet, according to the offering plan, which was approved by the state Attorney General’s […]

Developer Jeffrey Gershon has closed on his $60 million purchase of the Jehovah’s Witnesses building at 74 Adams Street, one of the religious group’s last remaining parcels in Dumbo. The site holds a one-story garage and allows for the construction of about 200,000 square feet of retail and residential space. Gershon’s Hope Street Capital secured about $100 million in financing for the space, according to property records. The financing was split between three loans: a building […]

Developer behind under-construction Norwalk mall faces buyout bid GGP, the developer behind the SoNo Collection mall in Norwalk, is facing a $15 billion buyout offer. Brookfield Properties, which already owns 34 percent of GGP, is offering $23 per share for the rest of the company – half in cash and half in equity, the Wall Street Journal reported. Under construction just off Interstate 95, the SoNo Collection would have more than 700,000 square feet of […]

Cleveland-based real estate company Stark Enterprises has moved into the New York market with its $92 million purchase of the ground lease at 30 Flatbush Avenue in Downtown Brooklyn, according to property records. The seven-story commercial office building spans 250,000 square feet, and Stark financed the purchase with a $75 million loan from Great American Insurance Company. The site is near Fort Greene Park on a triangular-shaped lot bound by Flatbush Avenue, Livingston Street and Nevins Street. […]

Brookfield Property Partners locked down $137 million in financing from the Bank of Nova Scotia for one of the apartment towers it’s developing at the massive Greenpoint Landing project in Brooklyn with the Park Tower Group. The Canadian lender provided the financing for 37 Commercial Street (also known as 37 Blue Slip), where the developers are building a 30-story, 373-unit residential tower spanning nearly 300,000 square feet, property records filed with the city Wednesday show. […]

A Brooklyn construction company has admitted to underpaying its workers and will forfeit $2.5 million because of it. MSR Electrical Construction Company and its head, 50-year-old Michael Riglietti, pleaded guilty on Wednesday to grand larceny and violating New York’s prevailing wage requirements, according to the Brooklyn District Attorney’s Office. On multiple projects, the firm was supposed to pay its workers $54 an hour plus benefits, but these workers instead got between $13.50 and $25 per hour with no […]

A Corcoran Group agent is enjoying his 15 minutes of fame after a video of him swatting away basketball star LeBron James on the New York City subway went viral. James Michael Angelo was en route to the firm’s Chelsea office on Monday when the Cleveland Cavaliers forward trained his camera on him. “Can you not?” Angelo said with annoyance, pushing the phone away. The video has since received 216,388 views on YouTube, 38,586 likes […]

President Trump’s ascension to the White House has coincided with his company’s decline among the city’s biggest private firms, according to a recent ranking by Crain’s. The Trump Organization feel steeply on the business publication’s annual list of the largest privately held companies, plunging from the No. 3 spot last year to No. 40. The company’s standings took a big hit when Trump’s federal disclosures revealed the organization’s revenue is less than “less than a […]

Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills is the second in most expensive retail location in the nation based on rental value, a new report from Cushman & Wakefield shows. It is solely eclipsed by New York’s Fifth Avenue. The famed stretch — home to Gucci, Versace, Louis Vuitton and other big-ticket stores — ranked second on last year’s list, too. This year, however, asking rent per square foot per year increased to $875, up from $800 […]

Market rate condos could be on their way out of Brooklyn’s controversial Bedford-Union Armory project. The Crown Heights development has drawn strong neighborhood opposition so far, and Economic Development Corporation president James Patchett said at a hearing this week that the city is “reevaluating” its decision to include 40 market rate condos in the project, according to the Daily News. The overall plan includes 56 condos, 20 percent of which would include income restrictions, as […]

The latest version of Mayor Bill de Blasio’s affordable housing program takes aim at unused real estate, proposing a tax hike on vacant land and a competition to build “tiny homes” on small city-owned properties. The Department of Housing Preservation and Development on Wednesday unveiled some details on the updated affordable housing program — dubbed “Housing New York 2.0” — which promises to add 100,000 affordable housing units to the 2014 plan, which pledged 200,000 […]

Real estate lender Dwight Capital inked a 20,000-square-foot lease at Georgetown Company’s office development 787 11th Avenue. Georgetown landed a $349.5 million construction loan from the Blackstone Group last October to fund the conversion of the former Ford Motor Company industrial building. Savills Studley represented Dwight while CBRE represented the landlord. Led by Adam and Josh Sasouness, Dwight claims it was the second-largest multifamily HUD lender in FY 2016 in terms of both transactions and […]

  New Yorkers may have to start walking an extra two minutes to get to the Levi’s in Times Square. The clothing company, famous for its jeans, is moving its duplex store from 1501 Broadway at West 44th Street to 1535 Broadway between West 45th and 46th Streets, according to the New York Post. The new location should open by the end of 2018 and span 17,000 square feet. Vornado Realty Trust owns the building and […]

Invesco bought a 95 percent stake in 80 Broad Street, valuing the FiDi office tower at $235 million, or $550 a square foot. The sellers, Raymond Chalme and Daniel Blanco’s Broad Street Development, are keeping a 5 percent stake and will continue to manage the 425,000-square-foot Financial District property. Cushman & Wakefield brokered the deal. Chalme and Blanco bought the 36-story Art Deco tower, which was built in the 1930s, for $175 million in 2014. […]

WeWork’s $20 billion valuation is the talk of the town, but the company’s co-founder Miguel McKelvey is evidently tired of hearing about it. “You can say OK it’s your opinion I’m overvalued or undervalued. Like, who gives a shit? It doesn’t affect me and the business I’m trying to do,” he said at a CornellTech@Bloomberg event Tuesday night. “Valuation does not come into the equation. So why do we even need to be in that […]

New York’s tourism boom of the past decade has been great for the real estate industry, but a small subgroup has mixed feelings about it: Times Square office landlords. With more visitors and panhandlers crowding the bow tie, it’s becoming harder to convince big office tenants to stay in the neighborhood. “It’s not ideal to wind through costumed characters on your way to work,” CoStar analyst Lauren Baker told Bloomberg. “There’s so much noise and […]

From the November issue: This past spring, Stribling & Associates broker Charlotte Van Doren landed an exclusive on a four-bedroom condo on East 57th Street and listed it for just shy of $5 million. Within 48 hours, buyers were making offers, and six days after going live, the property went into contract for $200,000 over the ask.  But now a very different scenario is playing out in the same building — with the same broker, just one […]

The family that owns a 13-acre site on the Long Island City waterfront is planning to build a $3 billion mixed-use project with 5,000 apartments and more than 300,000 square feet of manufacturing space. The grandchildren of Louis Pfohl, a Midwest engineer who in 1938 founded Plaxall Realty, are seeking to rezone the area on the man-made Anable Basin to make way for the megaproject, the New York Times reported. It would include an apartment […]