From left: Charles Cohen, Anthony Malkin and 112 West 34th Street

The $81 million Pinnacle Award-nominated renovation of 112 West 34th Street by father-and-son development duo Peter and Anthony Malkin may have won critical acclaim, but it wasn’t actually legal, according to developer Charles Cohen, who owns the building. In a new lawsuit, Cohen alleges that the Malkins’ W&H Properties, which has a 115-year lease on the property dating back to 1963, never got permission to make structural changes, as required by the terms of their agreement. As a result, Cohen is seeking to oust the Malkins and terminate their $840,000-a-year lease, according to the New York Times. [more]

Anthony Malkin and the Empire State building

Li & Fung, a Hong Kong-based trading company, signed a lease yesterday for 490,000 square feet in the Empire State Building, the largest deal of the new year and one which would have also topped last year’s list, the Post reported. The deal comes after months of negotiation between the landlord and tenant. The lease includes several floors in the base of the building, which has asking rents ranging from the mid-$40s a square foot to the high $50s, according to CoStar. Anthony Malkin, president of W&H Properties, which owns the Empire State Building, declined to comment, as did Li & Fung.
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For New York City real estate, 2010 in many ways marked a return to normalcy after the tumultuous aftermath of the financial crisis. As the ubiquitous real estate appraiser and Miller Samuel CEO Jonathan Miller put it: “it was a year of a sense of relief.” City home prices stopped their freefall and sales activity improved considerably from the post-Lehman doldrums. Stalled condominium projects like the Sheffield and 1 Rector Park re-started sales. Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim bought Tamir Sapir’s Fifth Avenue townhouse, the Duke Semans mansion, for $44 million. As the unspoken taboo on ostentatious spending faded, a number of high-end residential properties changed hands at the end of the year, including Brooke Astor’s 14-room duplex at 778 Park Avenue, which finally sold after two years on the market (albeit for a significant discount from its original asking price). Japanese retailer Uniqlo snagged 89,000 square feet at 666 Fifth Avenue’s former Brooks Brothers space for a record $300 million, demonstrating that retail is still thriving along the posh shopping corridor.
But the economic downturn continued to make its presence felt. The office market remained uneven and troubled lender iStar Financial fought to stave off bankruptcy amid lingering fears of a double-dip recession.
Here are The Real Deal staff’s picks for the stories that most altered the New York City real estate landscape in 2010, in alphabetical order. [more]

Turns out Empire State Building owners Anthony and Peter Malkin aren’t the only ones who have a problem with Vornado Realty Trust’s planned 15 Penn Plaza — FM radio broadcasters say that the 67-story tower could interfere with radio transmissions. The $3 billion project, which is slated to reach 1,216 feet into the sky, could obstruct radio signals emitted from the Empire State Building, which is located near its planned site on the corner of 33rd Street and Seventh Avenue, according to Radio World. The Empire State Building is home to 19 different radio stations, many of which began operating there after the Sept. 11 attacks. Vornado has, thus far, not expressed any intent to add broadcast facilities to its planned tower, compounding some radio broadcasters’ fears. [Radio World]

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Anthony Malkin and the Empire State Building

The Empire State Building’s financial situation improved in 2009 with a doubling of net operating income from the prior year. Despite that, it was unable to accomplish its major financial goal of obtaining large loans to fund an a [more]

The Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust is looking to further reduce its $2.6 billion portfolio by selling stakes in some of the nine Midtown office buildings — including the Empire State Building — that it owns through partnerships with the Malkin family, Crain’s reported. The buildings are known as the W & H Portfolio, which is headed by Anthony Malkin. Members of the trust have reportedly met for preliminary talks with Malkin, bankers and attorneys, and ideas on the table include creating a public real estate investment trust for the buildings, each of which is currently structured as a separate entity. Meanwhile, according to the Post, the 788-room New York Helmsley hotel at 212 East 42nd Street, which is not part of the W & H Portfolio, has also hit the market. CB Richard Ellis brokers Darcy Stacom, Bill Shanahan and Brad Brunnell are handling the sale, which sources expect to garner more than $300 million. That same team helped sell the Helmsley Carlton House on the Upper East Side to Angelo Gordon & Co. and Gary Barnett for $170 million earlier this year. Barnett plans to convert the Upper East Side property into a condominium. [Crain's] and [Post]

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From the September issue: The grim national housing statistics delivered last month, which renewed fears of a second sharp decline in the overall economy, were not reflected in the Manhattan commercial leasing market — which continued to improve modestly overall. “We are not seeing any double dip in office leasing,” said Jeffrey Peck, senior managing director at commercial advisory firm Studley. However, he noted, “we are also not seeing any tremendous strength.” Last month, brokers said tenants continued to actively poke around for new space. The blockbuster example in Midtown was a clothing supply firm reportedly looking to lease 500,000 square feet in the Empire State Building. A pending deal could not come at a better time for the iconic tower, which was dealt a blow last month when the City Council approved plans for Vornado Realty Trust to build a nearby skyscraper. The owner of the Empire State Building, Anthony Malkin, was aggressively arguing that the proposed tower, 15 Penn Plaza, will block the views from his building.

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The Empire State Building is making headlines yet again, but this time not because of bedbugs or to gripe about the proposed 15 Penn Plaza tower. A rally will be held there this evening at 6:00 to protest owner Anthony Malkin’s decision not to light up the building in blue and white to commemorate what would have been Mother Teresa’s 100th birthday, the Wall Street Journal reported. Malkin said that the skyscraper celebrates Easter, Eid, Hanukkah and Christmas, but refrains from recognizing religious figures, he told ABC in June. The Catholic activist group, the Catholic League, first started publicizing the issue in May, when they announced that their request to have the building lit up for Mother Teresa was refused. Since then, the organization has been recruiting other groups to support the issue, though some have disagreed with the campaign. Meanwhile, the building will be lit up tonight in red, white and blue to mark Women’s Equality Day.[WSJ]

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The City Council Land Use Committee voted today in favor of Vornado’s roughly 1,200-foot, Pelli Clarke Pelli-designed 15 Penn Plaza, despite protests from Empire State Building owner Anthony Malkin that it would mar the city’s skyline, ArchPaper reported. More important than the skyline argument at the hearing was the issue of who would build 15 Penn Plaza. Before today’s vote, Vornado offered a last-minute plan, calling for at least 15 percent of the construction work to be done by women- and minority-owned business enterprises. Though the council members voted 19-1 for the project, there were still some objections over the fact that the council does not use its limited leverage over such projects to extract more concessions early on regarding who is doing the construction, rather than at the very end, when it is too late to have an impact on the project. [ArchPaper]

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Rendering of 15 Penn Plaza

Management at the Empire State Building is concerned that a new skyscraper
will obstruct views of their iconic landmark and bring unwelcome
changes to the Manhattan skyline. A proposal to build 15 Penn Plaza — a
67-story, 1,200-foot office building down the street from the Empire
State Building — will be the subject of a hearing on Monday in front of
the City Council. The proposal, which will need Mayor Michael
Bloomberg’s approval following the hearing, was already voted down,
36-1, by Community Board 5. “Just as the world will never tolerate a drilling rig next to the Statue of Liberty, why should governmental bonuses and waivers be granted to allow a structure as tall and bulky at 15 Penn Plaza to be built 900 feet away from New York City’s iconic landmark and beacon?” said Anthony Malkin, president of Malkin Holdings, which responsible for the daily operation of the Empire State Building Company. He plans to speak to the City Council and its subcommittee on Zoning and Franchises on Aug. 23. TRD

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