Donald Trump and 40 Wall Street
Thanks to aggressive leasing deals, Donald Trump again has managed to improve 40 Wall Street’s value, according to the Wall Street Journal.
Leases for more than 600,000 square feet worth of space at the 1.3 million-square-foot office tower were set to expire in 2009, yet in the last six months the Trump Organization has managed to fill two-thirds of that space in a tepid office leasing environment. [more]
Trump’s new book[Updated 11:55 a.m. on Dec. 6, 2011] The Donald has a lot to say in his latest book, out today. In between moderating debates for Fox News, taking gold bars as a deposit at 40 Wall Street, mulling a run for office and meeting with Republican presidential nominee hopefuls (as he did today with Newt Gingrich), Trump penned another political book: “Time to Get Tough: Making America #1 Again.”
In the latest advice volume, the developer of real estate from Israel to Florida, suggests that America’s problems are the result of President Barack Obama not loving America enough, that the only way to fix the deficit is to take Iraqi oil by force, and that Trump himself is worth a total of $7 billion, a disputed figure. [more]
When Donald Trump’s newest tenant in his 70-story office tower at 40 Wall Street suggested an unconventional security deposit payment method, the former would-be presidential candidate took it as an opportunity to bash President Barack Obama. According to the Wall Street Journal, precious metal dealer Apmex will pay the $176,000 security deposit on its 10-year lease with three 32-ounce bars of gold, each about the size of a television remote.
“It’s a sad day when a large property owner starts accepting gold instead of the dollar,” Trump said. [more]
70 Pine Street and Young WooMore than 500,000 square feet of office space has just been put up for lease at 70 Pine Street, the former headquarters of AIG, the Wall Street Journal reported. An excess of unused office space in Downtown Manhattan resulted in more than 5.9 million square feet of space being added to the market during a 12-month period ending in April, according to Cushman & Wakefield. The asking price for the AIG space, which was purchased with neighboring 72 Wall Street for $150 million last year by Youngwoo & Associates, is between $33 and $35 a square foot. Asking rents are down 25 to 30 percent from what they were at the market’s peak, brokers said. Other large blocks of city space that have been vacated by financial companies are now available at 40 Wall Street, 85 Broad Street, 125 Broad Street and 77 Water Street. [WSJ]
Trump Soho is “subtly” opening this Friday, but expect “something a little more lavish” in the fall when “the world’s in a little better place,” Donald Trump Jr. told the New York Times. Trump, who is an executive president at the Trump Organization along with his sister, Ivanka and brother, Eric, shied away from the title heir apparent to the Trump throne. He declined to disclose how sales are doing at the new condo-hotel, but said units, ranging from under 500 square feet to 10,000 square feet, are going for roughly $2,900 a foot. Hotel stays are starting at $389 per night, though the Trumps are hoping to ramp up the rate to $500 per night by the fall. Trump is also managing leasing at Downtown office tower 40 Wall Street, where he said occupancy has risen to above 75 percent, from 60-something one year ago.
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.
GDS Publishing, which publishes industrial and business management
journals, has signed a seven-year lease for 20,200 square feet at 40
Wall Street. The asking rent was $38 per square foot, sources told
Crain’s New York Business. The fact that Donald Trump owns 40 Wall
Street was an important factor in GDS Publishing’s decision to move,
said FirstService Williams’ Jared Freede, who represented GDS
Publishing in the transaction. The company plans to move to 40 Wall
Street from 33 Whitehall Street in the fourth quarter of this year. [more]
