From the June issue: In New York, where real estate often runs in the family, Richard Maidman, 78, fits right in. He is chairman of Townhouse Management Company, which grew out of a dress company founded in 1933 by his father, William, and he works alongside his son Mitchel, who serves as the company’s president. But the Maidmans may be most closely associated with another real estate clan, the Dursts. For decades, the two families haggled over 113 West 42nd Street, a narrow high-rise owned by the Maidmans that the Dursts needed to raze to make way for the Bank of America tower. Both sides finally struck a deal, and the Dursts picked up the building for a reported $13 million. Today, Townhouse, which owns or manages 60 rentals, co-ops and condos in Manhattan and the Bronx, is leasing 35-39 East 63rd Street, a new luxury rental where one bedroom rents average $10,000. Maidman’s office, meanwhile, is decidedly more modest, shoehorned into the basement of a Midtown high-rise where the rent is $27 a foot. Click here to see Maidman’s desk.

Douglas Durst, chairman of the Durst Organization, said he has no current plans to acquire any more buildings in Manhattan because prices are not corresponding with value. “During the recent recession… prices just never came down to a level that we were comfortable with,” Durst said in an interview in the Wall Street Journal. “And now they’re rising again.” As for his recent investment in 1 World Trade Center, Durst said his firm was wanted on the project to manage the building once completed because the project’s developer, the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey, has a poor reputation with office towers. He said in addition to the 1.2 million square feet being leased by Conde Nast and the Chine Center, the government agency General Services Administration is in talks to lease 600,000 square feet. [more]

Clockwise from top left: Cushman & Wakefield CEO Glenn Rufrano, John Grotto of the Durst Organization, a rendering of 4 Times Square retail and Ariel Schuster of Robert K. Futterman & Associates

Major New York City developers and their brokers gathered in Las Vegas this week for
the retail trade show RECon and revealed additional details about significant Manhattan
retail locations.

On Monday, the Durst Organization unveiled renderings for the shopping portion of
4 Times Square, known as the Conde Nast Building. Later, a source said the signage
rights on the upper portion of the tower were being offered for $1 million per side of the
building.

That was just one of the many New York City retail locations highlighted in Las Vegas,
home of the International Council of Shopping Centers show held at the Las Vegas
Convention Center. [more]

From left: Bradley Mendelson, executive vice president of Cushman & Wakefield; Jeff Blau, president of Related Companies; Amira Yunis, executive vice president of Newmark and Jason Pruger, Executive Managing Director at Newmark

New York retail brokers and principals are making late appointments and boarding flights over the next few days in preparation to attend the world’s largest retail real estate show in Las Vegas.

Most of the city’s real estate professionals who focus on leasing and sales of store spaces will be at the International Council of Shopping Centers global convention known as RECon, from Sunday to next Wednesday, at the Las Vegas Convention Center.

The attendee list is a Who’s Who of New York City retail, from landlords like Vornado Realty Trust, Crown Retail Services and Forest City Enterprises to brokerages like Cushman & Wakefield, CB Richard Ellis and Northwest Atlantic. [more]

Two thousand clear prismatic glass panels designed by architecture firm Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, an elegant way of disguising the 185-foot tall concrete base of 1 World Trade Center, have proved difficult to manufacture at the scale necessary for the building, according to the New York Times.

Trials have resulted in brittle glass prone to shattering, leaving the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey to look for new ideas. With the structure now rising to the 65th floor, it’s back to the drawing board.
[more]

From left: Douglas Durst, Jody Durst, Andrew Cuomo, Marc Holliday and Andrew Mathias

What do Douglas and Jody Durst, heads of the Durst Organization, Marc Holliday and Andrew Mathias of SL Green and Governor Andrew Cuomo have in common? They topped the Observer’s annual list of the 100 most powerful people in New York real estate. Carlos Slim, believed by some to be the world’s richest person, Sam Zell and Gary Barnett headline the notable newcomers to the list, while old money like Peter and Anthony Malkin and Bill Rudin also place in the top quarter of the list. Finally, the newest presidential candidate, Donald Trump, jumped two places to 14th on the list from last year, and and Mitchell Steir and Michael Colacino are the highest ranking working brokers, both at No. 33. [NYO] [more]

Women from three of the city’s top real estate families, the Silversteins, Dursts and Olshans, discussed the market as well as their personal experiences in the business last night on a panel hosted by New York Commercial Real Estate Women’s Network, or NYcrewn (click here to see the photos). The forum was titled “The Women Leading NY’s Real Estate Families.” The discussion with Lisa Silverstein, senior vice president of Silverstein Properties; Helena Durst, vice president of Durst Organization; and Andrea Olshan, COO of Mall Properties was moderated by Faith Hope Consolo, chairman of retail leasing and sales at Prudential Douglas Elliman. TRD [more]

From the April issue: In the tight quarters of Manhattan real estate, cobbling together space by assembling blocks of adjacent land has long been one of the go-to strategies to make room for something bigger.

Now there’s good indication that, after a recession hiatus, developers are again turning their attention back to assembling properties.

Real estate firms such as the CIM Group, the Rockefeller Group and Extell Development are betting that as the economy improves, the investments made in these sites will pay off in the same one-plus-one-equals-three way they have for other companies in the past (see the Durst Organization’s One Bryant Park, for example).

In addition, brokers say that increased activity has happened faster than many expected. [more]

The former ESPN Zone retail space at the Durst Organization’s 4 Times Square — the Conde Nast building, at least for a few more years — is back on the market for the first time since 1998. According to the Observer, the Dursts have already begun showing the 45,000-square-foot space, at 42nd Street and Broadway, to prospective tenants, though they plan to formally launch it at the ICSC retail trade show in Las Vegas next month. Since ESPN Zone shuttered last spring, Disney has been using the space, which contains three full floors and 185 feet of street frontage. [more]

Chris Ward and a rendering of 4 WTC

The state funding entity New York Liberty Development that pulled a $900 million bond offering Monday needs to sell the securities by the end of the year or risk stalling the construction schedule of 4 World Trade Center, Christopher Ward, executive director of the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey, said today.

Larry Silverstein’s Silverstein Properties has enough money to fund the project through the end of the year, but the additional funds are needed to be certain that work proceeds into 2012.

“We would need to price those [4 World Trade Center] bonds at least by the end of this year to ensure that construction continues. And we are very optimistic that is going to happen,” Ward said. [more]