111 Eighth Avenue
As if the $1.8 billion Google spent to acquire 111 Eighth Avenue in 2010 wasn’t enough, now the search giant will be hit by a massive property tax bill increase — 17 percent greater than the one it incurred last year.
After some delay, the city will send out its updated property tax assessments, which take affect in July, over the next few days, and according to the Wall Street Journal most bills will increase. [more]
111 Eighth AvenueInside Google’s new 111 Eighth Avenue digs, the search engine is facing off against ad giant Deutsch for space on the 14th and 15 floors, the New York Post reported.
Donny Deutsch’s firm has a 140,000-square-foot lease it inked with the previous owners that runs through 2013, and comes with a renewal option to expand at market rate — which the Post pegs at about $70 per square foot in the Meatpacking District. At the same time, Google wants to expand within its new building. [more]
Benjamin Lambert (left), founder and
chairman of Eastdil Secured, and company
CEO Roy March in the firm’s
Midtown headquartersFrom the September issue: Google’s record $1.8 billion purchase of 111 Eighth Avenue late last year momentarily put the name Eastdil Secured on the lips of everyone in New York’s real estate industry. But the low-profile real estate investment banking firm, which managed the sale, doesn’t have the street-level cachet that many of its rivals have.
While Manhattan’s building-sales brokers and financiers (those who focus on large institutional deals, often over $100 million) know the firm as a powerhouse, many others in real estate still have no idea who Eastdil is. [more]
Taconic Investment Partners, the firm that was part of a group that sold the Chelsea office building 111 Eighth Avenue to Google last December for $1.8 billion, completed raising $220 million for a fund focused on buying New York City properties, the company said in a statement today.
The Chelsea-based firm is targeting “value-add and opportunistic multifamily, office and retail assets in New York City,” the company said, expecting to earn a 15 percent to 17 percent net return on the investments.
“The shifting real estate landscape and capital markets disruption are likely to provide opportunities for significant long-term upside potential,” company co-CEO Paul Pariser, said in the release.
Even as Taconic did well with the Google sale, in other deals it has suffered, for example at 375 Pearl Street. Taconic purchased the tower in 2007 for $173 million and sold it this June for $120 million. – Adam Pincus [more]
More and more of the big technology companies are interested in space in Manhattan, in particular because of their desire to be near the advertising companies on Madison Avenue, the New York Times reported. During the upcoming Advertising Week, Yahoo will be able to present its new offices in Viacom’s Times Square building to potential advertising clients, in a way that it wasn’t able to do before.
Yahoo’s Times Square suite at 1540 Broadway has purple-hued conference rooms, a lobby with custom graphics and door pulls shaped like exclamation points, and a dynamic design that are symbolic of a high-tech company. Comments
Jim Breyer of Accel Partners and 111 Eighth Avenue
Venture capital firm Accel Partners is setting up shop on the 16th floor of 111 Eighth Avenue, the Chelsea building former tech startup Google bought for $1.8 billion last year, the New York Post reported. The space is the technology investment firm’s permanent New York City headquarters when conducting business with the city’s growing tech scene, largely centered on the area between Union Square and the Flatiron District dubbed “Silicon Alley.” The office will be headed by Jim Breyer, a lead investor in Facebook, and a member of the board of directors of Walmart and Dell. [Post, 2nd item] [more]
From the September issue: In its eight years of publication, The Real Deal has covered the real estate industry in a city that’s been transformed by a massive building boom, was crippled by the subsequent bust, and is now in the midst of a tentative recovery.
The compendium of stories we’ve written runs the gamut from the record-setting building and apartment purchases during the boom, to the toppling of mega-developers during the bust, to new entrepreneurs trying to get into the real estate game during today’s fragile recovery. This month, for the anniversary of our 100th issue, we bring you some of the most compelling stories we’ve tracked in these pages, many of which have unfolded and evolved over time, much as the magazine itself has. And watch the video below to see The Real Deal Publisher Amir Korangy talk about the special process for creating the unique 100th issue cover.
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The fifth floor of Google’s new New York headquarters is designed with the theme “Hidden New York”, and am New York got pictures of the industrial-style designed space. There’s the Meatpacking District-inspired conference room with real meat hooks used for chandeliers, a meeting room inspired by a city studio apartment with couches furnished from halves of old-fashioned claw-foot bathtubs, walk-in phone booths replicating those found years ago in New York, a kitchen based on the “We Are Happy to Serve You” coffee cups and a dining hall with wall graphics that mirror the view from the windows. See photos from am New York above. [am New York] [more]
111 Eighth AvenueFrom the July issue: As any theatergoer knows, there’s nothing like a pause in the action to build the dramatic tension.
And that’s exactly what happened when Google — the behemoth technology company based in Mountain View, Calif. — asked for (and quietly received) a several-week break in the active marketing of 111 Eighth Avenue during the second half of November, when it became serious about buying the building.
Google, which was represented by CB Richard Ellis, wanted to make sure that the $1.77 billion (plus millions in additional expenses) it was about to spend on the 2.9 million-square-foot Chelsea office building was a good price.
“That was a very nerve-racking time,” said one insider, about the late-fall marketing pause that came two months after the story broke that the building was for sale for about $2 billion. [more]
The volume of Manhattan office property sales has more than doubled in the second quarter to $5.5 billion, after lagging the rest of the commercial property sales market in the first quarter of 2011 and all of 2010, according to Eastern Consolidated’s office property mid-year report for 2011 released today. After stalling for more than nine quarters, the office sales market surged in the second quarter with 14 sales of $100 million or more, the report shows. Those included Paramount Group’s purchase of a minority interest in 1633 Broadway for $980 million and Monday Properties’ $760 million recapitalization of 230 Park Avenue through Invesco. These preliminary second-quarter results mark a large increase over the fourth quarter of 2010, when Google purchased 111 Eighth Avenue for $1.77 billion. That deal marked 46 percent of the $3.85 billion volume that quarter. – Miranda Neubauer [more]
