David Von Spreckelsen, senior vice president at Toll Brothers City Living,
and 99 Wall Street

Toll Brothers City Living, the urban development division of the U.S. home builder, is relocating its New York headquarters to 99 Wall Street in Manhattan from Downtown Brooklyn, Crain’s reported. The company had been working out of a temporary space on Livingston Street for about six months since leaving its long-term space at 16 Court Street.

The company is leasing about 4,700 square feet in the Financial District building, according to David Von Spreckelsen, senior vice president at Toll Brothers City Living, who said the firm also looked at spaces in Soho, Noho and Union Square.

“Manhattan is more convenient for most of our employees,” Von Spreckelson said. [more]

Ron Moelis

From the November issue: In 1998, L+M Development Partners started its first affordable housing project on West 148th Street, between Adam Clayton Powell and Frederick Douglass boulevards. At the time, the vacant block was inhabited solely by boarded-up, graffiti-scrawled buildings, abandoned by their owners in the ’60s and ’70s. In the middle of the block sat P.S. 90, a Collegiate Gothic-style structure built in 1907 by architect Charles Snyder. Unused by schoolchildren for 30 years, the building’s windowpanes were broken or missing, and its stone gargoyles tarnished. Trees sprouted amid overturned desks.

This spring, a buyer paid $1.13 million for a three-bedroom combination apartment in the P.S. 90 building — restored and converted to condos by L+M. [more]

Edge developer Douglaston Development has taken the lead on building a nearby site at 3 Northside Piers in Williamsburg and plans to break ground on a $300 million project in March, the Wall Street Journal reported. Douglaston, led by CEO Jeffrey Levine, intends to build a 40-story rental tower where rents range from $55 to $60 per square-foot.

The tower was originally supposed to be part of a three-building complex developed by Toll Brothers, L&M Development Partners and RD Management, but after sales were slow — even after price cuts — in the first two Northside Piers buildings, Toll Brothers backed out of the project. L&M and RD will help on Douglaston’s version of the tower. [more]

Scott Rechler, Jeffrey Levine, Hal Fetner and Kenneth Horn, the heads of
RXR Realty, Douglaston Development, Durst Fetner Residential and
Alchemy Properties, respectively, were just some of the top-flight real estate executives that attended Michael Stoler’s “Stoler State of the Market” conference yesterday, at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (see photos above). Stoler asked direct, probing questions covering the availability of debt and equity, financing, expectations for 2012 and residential market from the private equity perspective. Those four topics were discussed by 32 panelists in front of an audience of more than 200 people.

Many panelists were optimistic looking forward. AKA Hotels & Korman Communities co-President Larry Korman said he expected a big year in 2012 as money comes off the sideline and returns to the investment game. – Marc Becker [more]

From left: Jennifer Aniston and 50 Gramercy Park North

The Real Deal got word that Jennifer Aniston’s Manhattan house hunt continues, and her latest stop was 50 Gramercy Park North. We also ran into TV crews from “Selling New York” while checking out an open house at 83 Franklin Street in Tribeca, where the building’s loft-style, 2,000-square-foot units are commanding near five-figures per month.
And we sat down for lunch with the Brooklyn Historical Society, where some of the borough’s big-name developers updated their latest projects. Click here for more from The Real Deal on the town. – Katherine Clarke, Adam Fusfeld and Sarabeth Sanders
[more]

As threatened, Toll Brothers has walked away from its $5.75 million down payment on the Gowanus Canal site of a would-be 477-unit mixed-income housing development, because of the waterway’s recent designation as a Superfund site, the Brooklyn Paper reported. “It just didn’t financially make sense to close on the properties and then have to wait 15 to 20 years until we could develop them,” said Toll’s David Von Spreckelsen. Toll Brothers had been in contract to purchase three parcels on the banks of the Gowanus for $20.6 million since 2004, but fought hard against the federal government’s Superfund designation, vowing to abandon the project if it were to be delayed by an Environmental Protection Agency-led remediation, which is expected to cost $500 million. The city had also opposed the designation, arguing that it would discourage more than $400 million in private investment in the area, including the Toll Brothers plans. [Brooklyn Paper]

[more]

Toll Brothers is looking to build as high as it can get away with on its new 205 Water Street site in new Dumbo Historic District. The luxury home builder bought the vacant site for $8.6 million in December. Toll has a 120-foot, 70-unit tower in mind, but needs approval from the Landmarks Preservation Commission before moving forward. The neighborhood was rezoned last year, putting a 12-story limit on residential construction. “We’re going back and forth on height at this point,” said David Von Spreckelsen, a spokesperson for Toll. “If there were no Landmarks Commission, we’d go to 12 stories without question.” Toll has yet to give any clues as to what the building would look like. The site, on Plymouth and Water streets, had briefly been considered for the middle school component of David Walentas’ Brooklyn Bridge project, which was ultimately moved to Dock Street and approved last year after a long battle with Community Board 2. [Brooklyn Paper]

David Von Spreckelsen, a senior vice president with Toll Brothers, and the Northside Piers development

Developer Toll Brothers plans to start closings on the second of its two waterfront Williamsburg developments, known as the Northside Piers towers, in September. David Von Spreckelsen, senior vice president with Toll, said that 2 Northside Piers is currently 30 percent in contract. Asking prices for units range from $493,990 for a one-bedroom to $2.34 million for the priciest of the three-bedroom offerings. Sales at the building began in September 2008. [more]

From the February issue:
Thirty years ago, the notion that the largely industrial area at the foot of the Manhattan and Brooklyn bridges would one day command some of the highest prices in Brooklyn real estate might have seemed about as plausible as an elephant taking wing. Nowadays, of course, Dumbo is well established as one of Brooklyn’s most sought-after neighborhoods. So much so that it has weathered the real estate downturn better than Brooklyn as a whole — a reality that the few developers planning projects in Dumbo hope continues. In December, the publicly traded luxury home builder Toll Brothers closed on a parcel of land at 205 Water Street where the firm intends to develop a condo with approximately 70 units. Toll paid $8.6 million for the land and hopes to start building by the end of the year. “Dumbo is fairly unique within the Brooklyn market,” said David Von Spreckelsen, a senior vice president with Toll Brothers. “It’s really been holding value better than the other neighborhoods in Brooklyn, and if you look at [condo] resales they’re at really strong numbers.”  [more]

Clockwise from left: Joseph Moinian, Sam Chandan, David Von Spreckelsen, Robert Levine, Jeffrey Levine and David Lowenfeld spoke at the New York Real Estate Summit yesterday.

Deep price drops and buyers bent on negotiation are trends in all of New York City’s boroughs, but residential developers say they are seeing distinct variations by neighborhood in the magnitude of price drops and the number of deals that make it to closing. “We have found a difference in neighborhoods in terms of closings,” said Robert Levine, president and CEO of RAL Companies & Affiliates, at a residential market panel at yesterday’s New York Real Estate Summit, hosted by The Real Deal columnist Michael Stoler. The Real Deal was a sponsor of the event. [more]