Forest City Ratner's Bruce Ratner, Darcy Stacom of CBRE Group and 8 Spruce Street (building credit: Gehry Partners)

Forest City Ratner is looking to cash in on the city’s record-strong residential rental market by selling a stake in Manhattan’s tallest rental building. The Wall Street Journal reported that the developer has commissioned Darcy Stacom, vice chairman of the CBRE Group, to find an investor to take as much as a 49 percent stake in 8 Spruce Street.

The 76-story, 903-unit Frank Gehry-designed building launched last February under the auspices of Citi Habitats and is now 80 percent occupied. Asking rents for the remaining units start at $3,750 per month for one-bedroom apartments and $6,720 per month for two-bedrooms. [more]

New York by Gehry, currently the tallest residential building in the Western Hemisphere, is premiering three penthouses in the next six to eight weeks, the Wall Street Journal reported.

And those residents — who will be paying between $40,000 and $60,000 per month, as The Real Deal has previously reported — will have a celebrity neighbor: Frank Gehry himself, according to the Journal. [more]

From left: Mayor Michael Bloomberg and architect Frank Gehry

Mayor Michael Bloomberg wants 10 Frank Gehry buildings in New York City in the next two years, the mayor told a crowd outside the Signature Theater, the latest Gehry building to open in his purview, at its opening today.

As the New York Observer reported, the mayor is prepping his New York legacy with Gehry’s help. “You should know that Frank and I had a conversation backstage,” Bloomberg said and looked at Gehry adding, “and we both committed to each other that we would get 10 more Frank Gehry projects going here — in the next 700 days. If my math is any good, Frank, that is one every 70 days, so we should meet some time later today to get going.” [more]

Signs outside the Signature Theater, at 480 West 42nd Street

After years of negotiations and millions in financing from everyone from Barry Diller to Mayor Michael Bloomberg, the Signature Theatre will open next Tuesday, at 480 West 42nd Street, the New York Times reported.

The 70,000-square-foot complex was designed by Frank Gehry and has taken many years to come to fruition, including years of confusion when the institution planned to be in a proposed performing arts center near Ground Zero, and later when funding was scarce after the collapse of Lehman Brothers Holding Company. [more]

A proposal for the performing arts center at 1 World Trade Center by student Pooya Bakhsheshi, who said he emphasized dance’s “celebration of life” by wrapping his building in a perforated metal skin, protecting it “like a pearl in a shell”

Twenty-seven architecture students at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh and at the University of Utah College of Architecture and Planning created designs for the Frank Gehry-commissioned Ground Zero performing arts center as part of their fall semester studio courses, the New York Times reported. They only had to worry about the design. While Gehry, who told the Times he didn’t know the students were working on the renderings, already presented his design, the students weren’t aware of that. Their main constraint, which Gehry himself contended with, was to situate the center on roughly 30,000 square feet near the One World Trade Center office tower and to accommodate the dance needs of tenant Joyce Theater. Gehry said the project, which is projected to cost as much as $300 million, is “on hold.” [more]

From the November issue: Three autumns ago, the collapse of Lehman Brothers knocked the wind out of New York’s real estate industry. Home sales flattened. Prices plunged. And, as layoffs mounted, office buildings emptied out. While there have been some spurts of activity, the industry has not gotten back to the highs of the boom. In fact, as the unemployment rate still hovers at an uncomfortably high level, and Wall Street (a once-reliable real estate engine) reports losses, it seems that a complete recovery might be years away.

All the same, there are signs of comebacks — whether they are from developers who once defaulted on mega-loans and seemed like pariahs, or stock prices that have bounced back from the doldrums at some public real estate companies. There are also geographic stretches of the city that had been pocked with empty retail spaces and empty condo buildings, but are now filling up with stores and residents. There are even some bankers who had been caught up in the subprime mess who are now back on the lending scene in a big way. [more]

Architect Frank Gehry has been forced to look for projects in China and India as development continues to stagnate in America. Bloomberg News reported that Gehry’s in competition to land a museum project in a Chinese metropolis and a spiritual building in India.

“There’s an art explosion in China,” Gehry said, “it’s really great — very exciting.”

But the 82-year-old admits he’d still prefer to work on U.S. projects in California and New York. [more]

From left: Architect Frank Gehry, MiMA at 555 West 42nd Street and a rendering of the new Signature Theater

Before architect Frank Gehry regained favor among New Yorkers with projects like 8 Spruce Street, one of the few projects he landed was the renovation of a new space for the 20-year-old Signature Theater Company, according to Media Bistro.

The new theater, located within the Signature Center at 555 West 42nd Street between Dyer and 10th avenues, is slated to open in February 2012. [more]

From left: Frank Gehry, 8 Spruce Street and a cartoon Gehry admiring a crumpled paper on “The Simpsons”

Architect Frank Gehry appeared on CNN’s Fareed Zakaria GPS this past Sunday (video unavailable) and spoke about his design process. When Zakaria suggested that a crumpled piece of paper provided the motivation for the folds typical of Gehry buildings, and especially his design of Disney Hall in L.A., Gehry said it was a myth perpetuated by a cameo in “The Simpsons.” “That was just a fun — fun thing, but it has — it has haunted me,” Gehry said. “People do — who’ve seen ‘The Simpsons’ — believe it.” (For our Spanish speaking readers, a dubbed clip of the episode in question can be seen here.) [more]

Community members and city officials remain committed to building a 1,000-seat performing arts venue anchored by the Joyce Theater at the World Trade Center, the Wall Street Journal reported, especially in the lead up to the opening of the Sept. 11 memorial. A new board is currently being formed to oversee its creation.
“Between now and the 10th anniversary, the focus will be on getting the memorial open and preparing for the anniversary, but as we get to this fall, everyone’s going to say, ‘What is the next step?’ and ‘How do you fully round out the site?’” said state Sen. Daniel Squadron. With construction still six years away, the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation has allocated $155 million for the Frank Gehry-designed project, which is estimated to cost $400 million to $500 million. [more]