The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has put its Madison Avenue headquarters and two adjacent buildings on the market in an attempt to close its massive budget gap and expects to bring in upwards of $150 million in a sale. According to the New York Times, the three, 20-story buildings, at 341, 345 and 347 Madison Avenue could fetch at least that much thanks to the opportunity to purchase air rights from Grand Central. A buyer could opt to demolish the existing structures and use those air rights to erect a taller-than-usual skyscraper on the site. The MTA purchased 347 Madison for $11.9 million in 1979 and acquired the other two properties in 1991 for a combined $36 million. [more]

A businessman who has been running a garage and restaurant at the Metropolitan Transit Authority’s Downtown headquarters for 12 years has been accused of forging his rental papers in order to get a good deal on his lease, according to the Daily News. The MTA assumed the leases of other tenants when took over 2 Broadway in 1998. At that time, Georgian-born David Khoukhachvili allegedly backdated a fake lease document so that the agency would be fooled into thinking his Bull and Bear restaurant and basement parking garage were long-time tenants, and were thus entitled to lower rent. Khoukhachvili, who is free on $1 million bail, was paying $13,000 per month with 3 percent increases, according to court papers. [NYDN]

From the February issue: As New York City construction firms get slammed by the downturn, they are turning to more modest projects, in some cases taking on multimillion-dollar renovations rather than the multibillion-dollar skyscrapers. While it’s clear that the collapse of the New York development market has taken a toll on builders and brokers, there may be nobody in the industry hit as hard as construction firms. As banks have largely cut off financing for new projects and cranes have been mothballed, thousands of contractors have lost their jobs. “It’s having a devastating impact on the construction market,” said Lou Coletti, president of the Building Trades Employers’ Association, which represents 1,700 construction management and contractor firms. “There are very few, if any, new projects moving forward.” To combat that lack of work, major New York construction firms are bidding for much smaller projects and diversifying into public-sector work, while other firms have been forced into bankruptcy protection.[more] [more]

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From the December issue:
While Manhattan buildings have seen sale discounts as high as 70 percent in this recession, this is not the first time the city has seen bargain-basement prices for skyscrapers. Indeed, in the early 1990s, when New York was in the throes of another recession, a flurry of deals was brokered that in hindsight seem shrewdly forward-thinking. This month, The Real Deal took a walk down memory lane and looked at some of those real estate deals to see which buildings traded at significant markdowns and which investors made savvy bets.