From left: 200 Lafayette Street, a rendering of 510 West 22nd Street and 100 Fifth Avenue (credit: PropertyShark)
It’s clear that technology firms have flocked to Midtown South to be close to their industry counterparts, but Crain’s noted that how such firms choose their specific space is not so clear. Thanks to the varying size, focus and age of tech firms it’s practically impossible to predict where they’ll choose space. [more]
From left: Shake Shack, Blue Smoke and Battery Place Market
Long chided for being too clean, too green and too removed from the city’s buzz, Battery Park City is beginning to establish itself among mature Manhattan neighborhoods. According to the New York Post, it’s starting with a restaurant boom.
Restaurateur Danny Meyer has opened three eateries in the area, including a Shake Shack at 215 Murray Street, a Blue Smoke at 255 Vesey Street and North End Grill at 104 North End Avenue. [more]
Anthony Albanese
Anthony Albanese, who co-founded development firm the Albanese Organization in 1949, died Tuesday. He is survived by his wife, Annette, to whom he has been married nearly 62 years, his four children, 13 grandchildren and one great-grandchild. Funeral mass will be held Saturday on Long Island.
Albanese was born in 1930, grew up in Ozone Park, Queens and attended Hofstra University before embarking on a 63-year career in real estate. He launched the Albanese Organization in 1949 with his brother, Vincent, and began buying sites in Queens for the development of four-story attached homes. [more]
Although Frank Gehry’s IAC and the Albanese Organization got a head start with their respective projects, IAC and 510 West 22nd Street, in terms of office development next to the High Line, other developers are eyeing the area as a prime spot for office buildings, due to the cachet the elevated park lends, the New York Times reported.
The Albanese Organization is looking for a 75,000-square-foot anchor tenant, with rents around $80 a square foot, for 510 West 22nd Street, which is a $140 million project. The site was previously being developed by the rapper Jay-Z. [more]
A parcel of land ripe for development, and previously owned and lost by rapper Jay-Z will likely be bought by the Albanese Organization for around $60 million, the New York Observer reported.
The site, at 511 West 21st Street, between 10th and 11th avenues, has 140,000 buildable square feet and is zoned for retail, hotel or office space.
The hip-hop star and real estate investor purchased the site at the height of the market for more than $50 million, and spent millions more on air rights, the Observer said. [more]
Chelsea Art Museum buildingThe Chelsea Art Museum is about to be replaced by Hewlett-Packard, which has special plans for the building. According to the New York Post, the tech firm signed a 10-year lease for the entire 34,500 feet inside the three-story museum building at 556 West 22nd Street near 11th Avenue. HP would not disclose the plans. The museum will remain in the building until Jan. 1.
CBRE brokers Pat Murphy and Jenny Ogden represented HP in the transaction, while a Murray Hill Properties team led by Jesse Rubens represented the owners. [more]
Midtown West is quickly becoming a hub of commercial activity, brokers say, in anticipation of the Related Companies’ Hudson Yards development and thanks to new zoning regulations. “Eastern Consolidated, and I personally, have done a tremendous amount of work there,” said David Schechtman, senior director of Eastern Consolidated’s Turnaround and Distressed Group. “There’s a renewed interest in the neighborhood. It’s south of the already established Hell’s Kitchen and the gateway to Hudson Yards. There are big old buildings there that are ready to be repositioned — old, raw material that could be reshaped.”
As The Real Deal previously reported, Midtown West office building sales rose by more than 100 percent year-over-year in 2011, to $5.7 billion from $1.8 billion in 2010, according to Eastern Consolidated’s recent MetroGrid Report for Midtown West, released last week, which defines Midtown West as the area that extends from 30th to 59th streets, and Fifth Avenue to the Hudson River. [more]
After a major evacuation, extensive preparations and a two-day mass transit shutdown, New
Yorkers have emerged after Hurricane Irene to find their city mostly unscathed.
“It was a remarkable non-event,” said Andrew Hoffman, COO of Stonehenge Partners.
Stonehenge, which manages approximately 2,500 apartments in 20 buildings, avoided the
evacuation orders with buildings like Midtown’s Ritz Plaza and 10 Downing.
Hoffman said they geared up for the storm by supplying each building with plywood, water
pumps, water vacuums, flashlights, batteries and thousands of glow sticks. [more]
West 37th Street Partners LLC, a joint venture between the Albanese Organization and the Buccini/Polin Group, closed on its purchase of a Midtown parking lot at 312-318 West 37th Street for $20.8 million, according to records filed with the city yesterday. This is Buccini/Polin’s first foray into the New York City real estate market.
The transaction, which closed Aug. 11, is slated to result in the construction of a brand new 300-room Garment District hotel between Eighth and Ninth avenues. Construction could start before the end of the year, sources told the Wall Street Journal recently though neither Albanese nor Buccini/Polin were immediately available for comment. -- Katherine Clarke [more]
Christopher Albanese, the developer of Battery Park City’s energy-efficient Visionaire condo and rental building the Solaire, is setting his sights on busted condo projects for his next green endeavor. Albanese, a principal of the Albanese Organization, told the New York Times that while “banks have been very slow to dispose of property,” there are several busted condo projects his firm is eyeing and he expects banks to be willing to sell by this time next year. Meanwhile, sales at LEED Platinum-certified condo the Visionaire, at 70 Little West Street, are on a one-per-week pace, down from 8 to 10 per week before the Lehman Brothers collapse. Prices are averaging $1,150 a foot, down from $1,300 a foot at the peak of the market. At the Solaire, which is located at 20 River Terrace and is 100 percent occupied, rents are down to $55 a foot with no concessions from $65 a foot at the peak. [NYT]
