From left: Former CBRE Group broker Jon Zuckerman, now an executive managing director at Newmark Knight Frank, CBRE brokers Mary Ann Tighe and Stephen Siegel, former CBRE tri-state President Mitchell Rudin, current president of U.S. operations for Brookfield Properties, and
Keith Caggiano, vice president at CBRE

The word on the street has always been that it’s a dog-eat-dog world in the city’s largest commercial brokerage firms, but brokers rarely reveal how the cutthroat maneuvering plays out.

But now, in a bombshell lawsuit filed this month, former CBRE Group broker Jon Zuckerman provides an inside account claiming he was forced to resign and give up his lucrative MetLife account while CBRE allegedly sought to consolidate control over his clients.

The suit only names the commercial property firm CBRE (under the name CB Richard Ellis Real Estate Services) and Zuckerman’s former partner, broker Keith Caggiano, and does not name MetLife or other CBRE executives. [more]

Supporters of the Occupy Wall Street movement have now begun targeting the Real Estate Board of New York on social media and then in turn by phone, following news reports that REBNY seeks to submit a proposal to the city limiting the public access hours of privately owned public parks. In response to an opinion article in today’s New York Times by Jerold Kayden, a professor of urban planning at Harvard University, on the legal gray area of such privately owned public spaces, and the news reports of REBNY’s plans, a Twitter user called @OccupyMyCat this morning posted, “Announcement! It’s time to Occupy REBNY, the Real Estate Board of New York!”

[more]

From left: 345 Park Avenue and Grace Plaza

Following the controversy surrounding the Occupy Wall Street movement’s ongoing presence in Zuccotti Park, which is owned by Brookfield Properties but is open to the public, new signs forbidding camping have gone up at similar parks in Midtown owned by Brookfield and Rudin Management, the New York Times reported.

The signs have gone up at Grace Plaza, next to the W. R. Grace Building at 43rd Street and Sixth Avenue, owned by Brookfield, and plazas attached to 40 East 52nd Street and 345 Park Avenue, owned by Rudin.

A woman who answered the phone at Rudin told the Times that there was a connection between the protests and the new signs.

“Sure it has a lot to do with it,” the woman, who was not named, said.

Brookfield declined to comment. [more]

Clockwise from top left: World Trade Center site, Port Authority Bus Terminal, South Street Seaport, Hudson
Yards, World Financial Center and Farley Post Office/Moynihan Station

From the September issue: “Mall” has been a four-letter word in the Manhattan retail world for some time now. Despite that, Manhattan property owners have begun to — or are planning to — rehab and build a historic amount of large-scale retail over the next few years.
Currently, developers such as the Westfield Group, Brookfield Properties, the Related Companies and Vornado Realty Trust have more than 2.5 million square feet of retail space under construction, or at least on the drawing board, in mall-like projects south of 59th Street.
If all of what’s planned gets built, it would be the greatest amount of large-scale retail space ever delivered in Manhattan during a five- or six-year period, a review of prior development by The Real Deal shows.

[more]

CB Richard Ellis promoted Matt Van Buren to president of the New York Tri-State Region, the firm announced today. Van Buren had served as an executive managing director of the Midtown Manhattan brokerage division since 2009 after joining the firm as a managing director in 2006.

Van Buren is replacing Mitch Rudin, who, as The Real Deal previously reported,  left CBRE in June to serve as the president and CEO of U.S. commercial operations for developer Brookfield Properties. Van Buren will continue to work out of the firm’s New York City headquarters at 200 Park Avenue. – Adam Fusfeld
[more]

The U.S. subsidiary of Japan’s Nomura Holdings is departing the World Financial Center to take more than 900,000 square feet at Worldwide Plaza, George Comfort & Sons and RCG Longviews’ 1.8-million-square foot office tower on Eighth Avenue and 50th Street that is now 95% leased, the Wall Street Journal reported. The move is expected in 2013. The tower was valued at $600 million in 2009.
The decision is a letdown for Brookfield Office Properties, which has been trying to lure tenants to the financial center for the more than three million square feet of leases that expire in 2013. [more]

While for the first time since 2000 Manhattan will see an entire year go by without the opening of a significant new office tower, the borough is gearing up for a surge in new office construction mid-decade, according to recent analysis by the New York Building Congress, released yesterday.

Manhattan added about 20 million square feet of new office space between 2001 and 2010, a modest offering by historical standards. Nearly 4 million square feet of new office space was created annually in the 1970s and 1980s.

“It is remarkable how little office space was actually added in Manhattan during the recent building boom,” said Richard Anderson, president of the Building Congress. — Katherine Clarke [more]

“One World Trade Center is now New York’s first address for premier corporate office tenants,” Port Authority of New York & New Jersey Executive Director Chris Ward declared today as he took the stage on the 34th floor of the yet-to-be-finished Freedom Tower to announce Conde Nast’s signing for one million square feet in the building (see photos above). “Already the announcement has generated new interest in 1 World Trade, and let me tell you, the word is now out: See you Downtown.”

Symbolic as today’s signing might be of a transforming neighborhood, many in the real estate industry say the landscape has been changing for a while now. [more]

Brookfield Office Properties will kick off its offering for shareholders to buy into its new Brookfield Residential Properties affiliate next week, the New York-based landlord announced today. Brookfield Office, a subsidiary of Toronto-based Brookfield Asset Management, recently merged its residential unit with Brookfield Homes to create Brookfield Residential, as the company moved to focus its own efforts exclusively on office properties. Shareholders of Brookfield Office will be offered the chance to purchase shares of the residential company for $10 until June 10. Brookfield Residential debuted on the New York Stock Exchange at the beginning of last month; shares closed yesterday at $11.95. TRD

Oppenheimer Funds has signed a 15-year direct lease for 235,000 square feet at 2 World Financial Center, where it’s currently a subtenant, the Post reported. The deal is a coup for landlord Brookfield Properties, which is facing relocations by current World Financial Center tenants Merrill Lynch and Nomura in the coming years. Oppenheimer’s current sublease is from Merrill Lynch, and expires in 2013. Stuart Romanoff, who represented Oppenheimer in the deal along with Cushman & Wakefield colleagues Amy Fox and Robert Constable, said the company conducted “an exhaustive search” for space but ultimately decided to stay put.  [more]