The Real Deal New York

Existing home sales rose 0.6% to a rate of 4.97 million units in April. This is the highest pace since November 2009. [more]

From left: Ben Shaoul and 254 Front Street

Ben Shaoul’s Magnum Real Estate Group has sold a high-end rental property in the Financial District to Queens-based construction and management firm Werber Management for $25 million, according to records filed with the city yesterday. [more]

Cushman & Wakefield CEO Glenn Rufrano and Toys “R” Us in Times Square

Toys “R” Us plans to vacate its signature 100,000-square-foot space in Times Square — Ferris wheel and all — by 2016, Crain’s reported. [more]

469 Seventh Avenue

Summit Business Media has signed a lease to take a 17,000-square-foot space at 469 Seventh Avenue, according to a release from Colliers International, which arranged the deal.

By July, the business-to-business media company will leave behind the sixth floor 475 Park Avenue South for an eight-year lease on the 10th floor of the 267,000-square-foot Midtown West building, between West 35th and West 36th streets. Nearly half of the 16 floors are still available, the release said. [more]

Rendering of crisis housing complex in Downtown Brooklyn

Construction is starting soon on a three-story, three-unit Downtown Brooklyn mini-complex that will serve as the city’s crisis housing for disaster victims, the New York Post reported.

The site, next to the Office of Emergency Management at 165 Cadman Plaza East, was chosen this month for the $1.1 million contract by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Brooklyn-based Garrison Architects was tapped as designer. Vienna, Va.-based American Manufactured Systems and Services’ proposal described two 822-square-foot units on the top two floors and a 480-square-foot one-bedroom handicap-accessible unit on the ground floor. [more]

Ian Bruce Eichner and Flatiron District (street photo via Flickr)

Developer Ian Bruce Eichner plans to spend $100 million for a site near the Flatiron Building as well as the air rights of several nearby buildings so he can put up a nearly 800-foot glass condominium tower, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Eichner, of Continuum Company, is within weeks of buying the parcel, at East 22nd Street between Broadway and Park Avenue South, from One Hand Realty LLC. [more]

Jonathan Tisch (Photo by
STUDIO SCRIVO)

From the May issue: Jonathan Tisch is the co-chairman of the board of Loews Corporation, a publicly traded company started by his grandparents in the 1940s that’s now worth in excess of $50 billion. The company has interests in off-shore drilling, insurance and commercial real estate with a major focus on hospitality. His family also owns 50 percent of the New York Giants. Tisch — the son of late business mogul Robert Tisch — is also chairman of Loews Hotels, a Loews subsidiary which owns and operates 19 hotels in the United States and Canada, including the Loews Regency Hotel at 540 Park Avenue. [more]

650 Madison Avenue

Major New York players such as Vornado Realty Trust, Ashkenazy Acquisition Corp. and Crown Acquisitions have moved to nab Carlyle Group’s 650 Madison Avenue office tower, with some bids coming in at north of $1.3 billion, the Wall Street Journal reported. [more]

1359 Broadway and Anthony Malkin

Tax and accounting firm FLSV Fund Administration Services is quadrupling its space at Malkin Holdings’ 1359 Broadway, Crain’s reported.

The 10,300-square-foot lease deal will see FLSV occupy 14,300 square feet on the 10th and 12th floors of the 22-story Midtown building, located between West 36th and West 37th streets. Asking rent for the space was in the $40s per square foot, and the leases for FLSV’s space expire in 2020. [more]

Flushing Meadows-Corona Park

Both Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Major League Soccer have taken a step back from plans to bring a soccer stadium to Queens’ Flushing Meadows Corona Park, Capital New York reported.

“”I think that’s a wonderful place for it, but it’s not the only place,” Bloomberg said during a press conference at the Museum of the Moving Image. “And I’m sure they’re going to continue to look and listen, and I just want to make sure that we do get a venue.” [more]