Park Tower Group, one of the first New York developers to see potential in the Brooklyn waterfront, is brushing off plans for 10 luxury apartment buildings with 4,000 units on a 20-acre plot of land at the old Greenpoint Lumber Exchange, which it purchased almost a decade ago, the New York Observer reported. At least one of the towers should break ground at the site, which is currently used for construction storage and movie lots, by 2012.

Park Tower, which is headed up by developer George Klein, had delayed the project during the recession and recently shifted its focus at the site to rentals from condominiums to more easily find financing. It hopes to secure construction loans in the coming months. [more]

World Trade Center siteFrom the September issue: Construction crews have been working feverishly at the World Trade Center site in anticipation of the 10th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks later this month.

But when families and friends of the victims gather there for the commemorative ceremony and the opening of the National September 11 Memorial, they will also see major progress at many of the buildings around them.

Indeed, lately — after years of delays and political infighting — steel has been rising rapidly at the 16-acre site.

Just to the north of the memorial, attendees will see the new $3.2 billion 1 World Trade Center, the most expensive office building ever constructed in the city, built to about the 80th floor. To the east, they will see the construction at three additional tower sites.

While much has been written about the progress at ground zero in a piecemeal fashion, this month, The Real Deal takes a closer at look how all of the pieces fit together — and how the finances pencil out for the developers. [more]

Now that Hurricane Irene has come and gone, commercial real estate firms across the city have been assessing the damage to their portfolio, and according to Crain’s, most have come away relatively unscathed.
For example, the city’s largest commercial landlord, SL Green, said there were only minor leaks across some of its 36 buildings. “We had nothing that even rises to the level of an insurance claim,” said Elizabeth Majkowski, senior vice president of operations at the firm. [more]

World Trade Center memorial photo from July 2011 (credit: Port Authority)

Drew Warshaw, chief of staff of the Port Authority and the man that Chris Ward bestowed the majority of the credit upon for the progress at the World Trade Center memorial, said the key to finishing the memorial in time for the 10-year anniversary was building the site’s PATH Station backwards. In an interview with New York Magazine, Warshaw said engineers concluded in 2008 that the only way to complete the memorial — which had been intended to sit atop the PATH station — in time was to build the roof of the station first, rather than build with the traditional ground-up method. He said, with safety concerns in mind, he expects about 1,500 people to visit the site per hour. [more]

Rendering of the September 11th Memorial plaza

The city has been preparing for years for the opening of the National September 11th Memorial and Museum on this year’s 10th anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks. But according to the Post, planners of the $508 million project overlooked one minor detail: there won’t be a single toilet on the eight-acre plaza to accommodate the millions of visitors expected. The memorial, which will display the names of the 2,982 victims of the terrorist attacks around two large reflecting pools, will eventually sit above a seven-story, below-grade museum, slated to open in the fall of 2012. The museum will of course have bathrooms, but the city said it has no plans to bring porta-potties to the site prior to its debut. Discount department store Century 21, which houses the closest bathrooms to the site, is already on alert for a deluge of visitors. [more]

Sept. 11 memorial contractor Bovis Lend Lease has been ordered to hire an independent watchdog to oversee its work, following a Department of Investigation probe that found possible incidences of bill-padding, according to the New York Daily News. Investigators say there’s evidence that Bovis may have improperly charged the city for bogus overtime costs on more than 100 different city-funded projects. The watchdog will review the builder’s “past and future financial activities,” according to a city spokesperson. [more]

Though the World Trade Center rebuilding effort has been marred by delays and bitter disputes, the National September 11 Memorial, which will take up half of Ground Zero, is well on its way to completion, with its opening date still on schedule for next year’s 10th anniversary of the terrorist attacks. The memorial, for which 90 percent of the contracts have been awarded, 99 percent of the steel has been installed and 60 percent of the concrete has been poured, is expected to draw between 5 and 7 million visitors per year — making it the biggest attraction in the city — and could even be finished a few months early. The museum below the eight-acre memorial space is slated to open the following year, and construction for the 125,000-square-foot space is slated to get underway in the next few months. The $700 million construction project got half its funding from the government and half from corporations and the public. Officials in charge of the memorial estimate that it will cost $50 million a year to run.

[Crain’s]