Once considered a viable alternative to pricey Manhattan office space, the New Jersey waterfront is now losing its luster in the eyes of fiscally-minded businesses, according to Crain’s, making 2009 the most dismal the region has seen in two years. The disparity in lease rates between New Jersey waterfront office space, in cities like Weehawken, Hoboken, and Jersey City, and Manhattan is slowly narrowing, leading to a slowdown in activity. After massive asking rent cuts in Lower Manhattan, the rent gap between there and New Jersey dwindled to just $6 per square foot, according to Cushman & Wakefield. As a result, the first nine months of 2009 saw 710,000 square feet of space hit the market with no takers.

Veronica Mainetti heads the Sorgente Group’s U.S. office.

From the January issue:
For more than a year, foreign investors have been sitting on the
sidelines waiting for a sign that the capital markets were beginning to
thaw and the time was right to invest in New York real estate.
One of the first big tests for them may be coming from an unlikely
source: the Sorgente Group, a Rome-based investment firm that has
already acquired some of the city’s most iconic properties and is
currently negotiating to buy another — the famed Woolworth Building in
Lower Manhattan.
In addition to those Gotham properties, the group, headed by
investor Valter Mainetti, is reportedly in talks to acquire some of the
most sought-after buildings in the United States, including San
Francisco’s TransAmerica Pyramid.  More

Cignature Realty Associates has closed a $3.75 million multi-family building deal at 329 West 13th Street in the Meatpacking District. Meanwhile, the Greenwich Club Residences, a condominium conversion project at 88
Greenwich Street and Rector Street, has released the 70 remaining units
on floors three through five while floors one and two contain retail. Prices at the 452-unit converted office building start at $399,000 for studios and $599,000 for one-bedrooms. Sales in the building started in early 2007 and the development is currently 80 percent closed. TRD  Click here for more. [more]

To help entrepreneurs get on their feet, New York City’s Economic
Development Corporation plans to open more business incubators like the
one at 160 Varick Street in Lower Manhattan. The EDC is looking for
commercial landlords willing to donate office space for the incubators. Industries such as food manufacturing, fashion, Web-based technology
and architecture could be served by the new program, the EDC said. The agency is seeking building owners who can provide 5,000 to 20,000
square feet of office space for free or for no more than $10 a square
foot, though landlords demanding higher rents can still submit
proposals. [more]

Lower Manhattan
and Midtown West are each expected to gain at least 20 hotels over the
next two years, according to a Manhattan hotel report. The report said
that citywide, a total of 10,298 new hotel rooms could flood Manhattan
through
2011, including the Mark and the Double Tree Chelsea, which are
expected to open in the middle of this year; the Nolitan, which is
scheduled to open in 2010; and Trump Soho, expected to open this
September. Of the proposed 50 new hotels citywide, 18 are mid-scale, 22
are boutiques and just three are pitched as luxury hotels. TRD
[more]

Office vacancy rates in Lower Manhattan have gone up, commercial rental prices and hotel occupancy rates have fallen, and subway ridership is down, according to the Downtown Alliance’s first-quarter report. The office vacancy rate at the end of the quarter was 8.1 percent, up from 7.4 percent the previous quarter and 7.2 percent in the first quarter of 2008. The average office rent per square foot in the first quarter was $44.58, down 11 percent from $50.28 in the first quarter of 2008. [more]