From left: Alto CEO Yaniv Melamud, architect Costas Kondylis and 200 West End Avenue

The Klein Group, a retail-focused real estate firm based in New Jersey, partnered with the Israeli company Alto Private Investments to purchase a retail condominium at the Costas Kondylis-designed 200 West End Avenue at 70th Street for $31 million. The purchase of the 26,000-square-foot condo from investment firm Clarion Partners closed this past Friday, and was the Klein Group’s second acquisition in New York City. [more]

From left: 1500 Broadway and 1972 Broadway

Fitch Ratings said it downgraded 12 classes of a $2.75 billion Morgan Stanley
commercial mortgage loan pool, led by expected losses at 1500 Broadway, Lincoln
Square retail center and a retail mall near Orlando, Fla.
The largest contributor to the expected loss is Oviedo Marketplace, which
includes 435,000 square feet of a 953,000-square-foot regional mall in Oviedo,
Fla., located 15 miles northeast of Orlando. Fitch said the loan was transferred to
special servicing when General Growth Properties, one of the nation’s largest mall
operators, included the property in its bankruptcy filing.
The property was later taken over by CW Capital. [more]

Nothing in Diller Scofidio + Renfro’s overhaul of the Lincoln Center campus has stirred more debate or more raw emotion than its redesign of the iconic fountain that stands at the center of the Josie Robertson Plaza (see image after the jump). Framed by Philip Johnson’s David H. Koch Theater, Max Abramowitz’s Avery Fisher Hall, and Wallace K. Harrison’s Metropolitan Opera, it has been a meeting point for cultured New Yorkers for nearly half a century and has figured prominently in movies like “The Producers,” “Moonlighting” and “Ghostbusters.” New Yorkers can find some solace then, in the knowledge that however the rest of the campus turns out, the fountain has been altered for the better. Though the entirety of the Josie Robertson Plaza, which Philip Johnson designed in imitation of the Piazza del Campidoglio in Rome, is a triumph of urban planning, the central fountain, which he also designed, was always a bit clumsy. Johnson was so impressed with himself for using the classicizing material of granite that it never occurred to him to use it with subtlety. Instead, he conceived the fountain as a thick slab clumsily supported by a stolid drum. [more]

From the August issue: From one of the penthouse terraces at the Element, a condo on West 59th
Street a block and a half from the Hudson River, marketer Shlomi
Reuveni gives a bird’s eye tour of the changes to the surrounding area
over the past few years.
Immediately to the north, he points out, there’s the new condo 10
West End Avenue. Across the street, John Jay College is building a new
facility. A couple blocks north, the Extell Development Company has
broken ground on the latest buildings in its massive Riverside South
project. Further south, Fordham University is planning its expansion. The
surrounding blocks — which were largely industrial until a few years
ago — are dotted with several other new condos and rentals. [more]

Golfer Vijay Singh (left) has purchased a penthouse at 555 West 59th Street

Professional golfer Vijay Singh and his wife Ardena Seth have purchased
a $5.675 million penthouse condominium at 555 West 59th Street in
Lincoln Square. The 3,369-square-foot duplex unit in the newly constructed Element near
West End Avenue has four bedrooms and a wood-burning stove and was
listed in June at $6.9 million by Brown Harris Stevens, according to
Streeteasy.com. The 46-year-old golfer signed a contract for the unit July 1 and
then closed on the sale July 23, according to city property records
posted today. The 34th- and 35th-floor apartment has views to the north, east and
south and includes a 1,463-square-foot terrace, the listing said.

[more]

Miramax co-founder Robert Weinstein, of the Weinstein Co., and his wife Annie Clayton paid $15
million for a townhouse at 39 West 70th Street on the Upper West Side. The couple closed on the mid-block building between Columbus Avenue and
Central Park West May 6, according to property records published today. The four-story building is 6,580 square feet and is approximately 100 years old, data from PropertyShark.com shows.
[more]