From left: Stellar Management's Laurence Gluck, Meyer and Joseph Chetrit, and Columbus Square

[Updated at 5:19 p.m. with comment from Laurence Gluck, president of Stellar] Colorado-based multi-family landlord UDR partnered with MetLife to purchase the newly developed, five-tower apartment complex Columbus Square for $630 million, UDR said in a statement this afternoon.

The seller was a partnership of Laurence Gluck’s Stellar Management and the Chetrit Group.  Stellar and Chetrit did not immediately respond to a call for comment. [more]

The final tower in the Columbus Square development at 805 Columbus Avenue and 100th Street is now open and available for lease, according to a statement released today by the Chetrit Group and Stellar Management.

The 15-story tower with 63 apartments is one of the five rental buildings that make up the Columbus Square development. The other towers are at 795 Columbus Avenue, 808 Columbus Avenue, 801 Amsterdam Avenue and 775 Columbus Avenue, with 710 rental units in total. The development also includes 500,000 square feet of retail and community space.
– Miranda Neubauer
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From the March issue: These days, few areas of Manhattan can be considered undervalued, despite fallout from the recent recession. “At this point, Manhattan is pretty mature,” said developer Matthew Blesso, president of Blesso Properties. “We’re going through this incredible recession, and it’s not like some of the neighborhoods are going to the pits, the way they did in previous recessions.” Still, there are pockets of the city that haven’t yet reached their full potential, where small investors (or homebuyers) looking for the greatest financial upside can snap up deals. [more]

Columbus Square general manager Jeffrey Davis and the development at 808 Columbus Avenue

A five-building, 710-unit rental complex on the Upper West Side is nearing completion, according to the Wall Street Journal, and, despite the premium price tag on many of its units, the development at 808 Columbus Avenue near 100th Street is drawing plenty of interest from renters. The $650 million Columbus Square residential project, which includes several big box stores, including a Whole Foods, Modell’s and TJ Maxx, as well as two private schools, has already leased out all the units at two of its buildings. The third, which just recently opened, was 20 percent leased after a week and a half on the market. [more]

T.J. Maxx appears poised to take on Century 21′s stronghold on discount retail in Lower Manhattan. According to the Post, the cheap fashion purveyor is in talks to lease space at Capstone Equities-owned 14 Wall Street. Broker Peter Ripka, of Ripco Real Estate, was mum on the deal, but T.J. Maxx usually takes between 25,000 and 30,000 square feet of space. Yesterday, news broke that competitor Century 21 would be opening a branch in the soon-to-be-ex-Barnes & Noble space near Lincoln Center, not far from where T.J. Maxx inked a deal at 250 West 57th Street earlier this year. The company, which already has an Upper West Side location at Columbus Square, is also slated to open a location at Bridgemarket, under the Queensboro Bridge. [Post]

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HomeGoods, a store selling designer furniture and home décor items at deep discounts, has signed a 10-year lease for its first Manhattan location at 795 Columbus Avenue between 98th and 99th streets. The store is taking 5,700 square feet on the ground floor and more than 20,600 square feet in the basement of the building, one of five residential towers in the new Columbus Square development. Winick Realty’s Lori Shabtai and Kelly Gedinsky are representing the landlord — a partnership between the Chetrit Group and Stellar Management, called 795 Columbus LLC — and declined to provide the asking rent. Peter Ripka of Ripco Real Estate represented the tenant and also declined to comment. According to market reports, asking rents for retail space in the neighborhood are over $200 a square foot. HomeGoods — which already has close to 300 stores across the country — will join sister chain TJ Maxx at the development, and is expected to open in the first quarter of next year. The home décor industry, however, is still on the decline. U.S. sales of housewares were $2 billion for the 12 months ended in June, a 6 percent drop from the previous year, according to market research firm NPD Group. [Crain's]

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Concessions for rentals, condos may be fading out

From the May issue: It must have been a bad dream, yet it was only 12 months ago that owners of apartment buildings and condos were pulling their hair out trying to figure out how to induce shoppers to rent or purchase. Landlords offered concessions of up to three months of free rent to entice tenants to sign a lease. Brokerage fees were paid by some landlords, and that wasn’t all: American Express gift cards; breakfast, lunch and dinner with cocktails; health club memberships, and even transportation to subway stops and office buildings. It was also common to offer incentives to retain existing tenants, including rent reductions of 10 to 30 percent.

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Jeff Winick

From the May issue: Drugstore chain Duane Reade had a problem: A competitor was sniffing around a large space across the street from one of its best Midtown locations on Sixth Avenue near West 57th Street. Officials at the store enlisted its broker, Winick Realty Group, to take care of the situation.

Several months later, not only had the competitor disappeared, but Duane Reade had taken that site at 100 West 57th Street for itself.

That’s partly thanks to Winick Realty’s founder and CEO, Jeff Winick, who used back channels to help secure the site for the drugstore. Winick’s aggressive, take-no-prisoners style seems to win him accolades from clients but has created fierce enmity among his competition.

That style has been on full display for the last few weeks in a federal courtroom in Lower Manhattan, where two former Duane Reade executives are on trial for fraudulently pumping up earnings reports, partly through allegedly bogus real estate transactions involving Winick. [more]

From left: Jeffrey Davis, the general manager of Columbus Square, 801 Amsterdam Avenue and 808 Columbus Avenue

(Updated with comments from Yuval Greenblatt: 1:41 p.m.; updated with
date of completion for project: 2:51 p.m.) The Chetrit Group and Stellar Management have taken leasing at the Upper West Side’s Columbus Square out of the hands of Prudential Douglas Elliman and put it in the hands of five new in-house leasing agents. Elliman’s one-year contract for the leasing of the two rental towers 801 Amsterdam Avenue and 808 Columbus Avenue expired March 31, said Jeffrey Davis, general manager of Columbus

Square. In that time, the brokerage’s five on-site agents rented out about 80 percent of the buildings, which have 100 and 359 units, respectively, he added. “The contract was up and as the buildings were almost finished leasing [so] we decided to finish with our in-house team and [then] proceed with the other buildings” once 801 and 808 Columbus Avenue are completed, Davis said, which will likely be in the third and fourth quarters of this year. “The renewal would have been for the whole complex but as the other buildings were not ready and there would be a lapse in time it did not make sense to continue.” [more]

From left: Prudential Douglas Elliman’s Stephen Kotler and Citi Habitats’ Gary Malin

Much like the sales market, Manhattan rental transactions are up and inventory is shrinking, though rents are still lower than last year, according to first-quarter market reports released today by Prudential Douglas Elliman and Citi Habitats. Elliman’s report, which is based on data from the Real Estate Board of New York and other sources in addition to the firm’s deals, tracked 2,663 rental transactions in the first quarter of 2010, up 16.3 percent from 2,290 in the same period last year. Citi Habitats, meanwhile, said it did over 2,650 rental transactions in the first quarter, up from roughly 2,300 in the prior-year quarter. At the same time, listing inventory for rentals fell 30.8 percent, according to Elliman. To see a story about the Manhattan rental market for all of 2009, click here. [more]