Yorkshire Towers at 305 East 86th StreetResidents of the Yorkshire Towers who filed a federal lawsuit earlier this year against a variety of federal agencies as well as the Metropolitan Transportation Authority saying the MTA had “arbitrarily and capriciously” chosen to place new subway entrances on their blocks and failed to properly assess the environmental impact of the mid-block entrances, are out of luck, Second Avenue Sagas blog reported.

A judge earlier this month granted a motion to dismiss the complaint by the residents of the building, at 305 East 86th Street at Second Avenue, based on a legal technicality (see the decision below). The residents waited eight months beyond the statute of limitations, and therefore the station entrances will go ahead as planned. That suit wasn’t the first one Yorkshire Towers filed against the MTA.

In a related case last year they sued the MTA over a Freedom of Information Law request.

The MTA has faced other criticisms as it continues in the first phase of the four-phase project. Residents near the construction complained at a community board meeting a couple of months ago that the work is causing them health problems. [Second Avenue Sagas] and [Second Avenue Sagas]
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The Grand Central Apple store (credit: Architect’s Newspaper)

The press has been let into the much-discussed Apple store at Grand Central Terminal, set to open Friday, according to USA Today. The tech giant is paying $60 per square foot for the 23,000-square-foot store, one of its largest, and will make shopping as simple as possible for rushed commuters, allowing them to purchase the company’s products without the help of a sales assistant. They can simply slide an iPhone across a product’s bar code and grab the item. The receipt is delivered to them via email. While State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli previously blasted station-owner, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority for the deal with Apple, the MTA is continuing to defend the transaction and the intrinsic value of having the company in the building. [USA Today] [more]

From left: State Comptroller Tom DiNapoli and renderings of the Apple store in Grand CentralThe sweetheart deal that Apple got to open a store in Grand Central Terminal has caught the attention of State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, according to the New York Post, and he’s launched an investigation into whether the Metropolitan Transportation Authority was overly generous with the lease terms.

Apple is paying less rent than most other tenants, including neighbors on the balcony, and is the only of the 100 retailers in the terminal that doesn’t have to share its revenue with the agency. [more]

Rendering of Grand Central Apple Store

The cash-strapped Metropolitan Transportation Authority presented Apple with an unusually favorable deal to take 23,000 square feet of space in the Grand Central Terminal, according to the New York Post.

Not only is Apple paying just $60-per-square-foot, while other tenants, such as Shake Shack, pay upwards of $200 per square foot, but Apple is also under no obligation to kickback a percentage of its sales to the MTA, as all other Grand Central tenants do. The Post said retail analysts believe the store should generate at least $100 million in sales per year. Real estate executives interviewed by the Post expressed some measure of surprise that the agency wasn’t able to recoup some percentage. [more]

Renderings of the Fulton Street Transit Center (source: MTA)

Unlike its Grand Central Terminal, where the Metropolitan Transportation Authority directly leases space to tenants and has become known as something of a difficult landlord, the MTA will lease all the space in the forthcoming Fulton Street Transit Center to one company and let that firm manage it. According to the Wall Street Journal, the agency hopes to make it a shopping and dining destination.

Once complete in 2014, the three-story glass and steel structure at the corner of Fulton Street and Broadway will have 70,000 square feet of retail space. [more]

Today, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority will finish tunneling the first phase of the Second Avenue Subway, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Trains won’t be running on the new subway line for at least five years, but that’s just a blip in the long history of the project, which was first proposed in the 1920s and has been kicked around ever since. [more]

Second Avenue Subway construction

The life of the the rocks being dug up as part of the Second Avenue Subway construction does not end on Second Avenue. Instead, the rocks have become part of an ecosystem as they are being used in construction projects around the New York and New Jersey region, WNYC reported. Contractor Skanska has an agreement with the Metropolitan Transportation Administration to transport the rocks off-site to Newark. There, at Armored Recycling, the “mole rock” is turned into usable construction material using a machine called the jaw crusher. 
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Rendering of Grand Central Apple Store

[Updated at 4.50 p.m. with information on the store's construction] The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has quietly
released the renderings of the new Apple Store planned for Grand
Central Terminal, on the agency’s website. The images (see above and below) show what the 23,000-square-foot
property on the terminal’s east balcony could look like. The MTA’s
finance committee approved the deal for Apple to lease the property at
the end of July. Apple is taking over the space from Charlie Palmer’s
Metrazur restaurant, and will be paying significantly higher rent: $1.1 million compared to $263,997. Apple
will also be making improvements to part of the leased property at its
own cost, including the installation of an elevator.

Walking through Grand Central late on Saturday night,The Real Deal spotted that construction on the store has begun (photos are available on our Facebook page). Workmen seemed to be removing the furnishings — mostly tables and chairs — from the former Métrazur space and erecting scaffolding. The construction manager declined any further access to the site. [more]

From the August issue: Bureaucrats may soon find that their bureaus are just a little bit smaller.
As the city, state and federal governments tighten their belts, brokers are seeing them reduce the amount of office space they lease. And with several prominent government agencies studying ways to reduce their footprints further, some insiders are beginning to worry about the impact that those cuts are going to have on Manhattan’s commercial leasing market.
The uncertainty extends to some nonprofit organizations that depend on government funding, commercial agents said.
As of June 30, government, education and social services accounted for 7.6 percent of office space usage in Manhattan and 11.8 percent of new leasing, according to Cushman & Wakefield. While the numbers were largely stable from a year earlier, both the city and state are cutting jobs, and big tenants like the Metropolitan Transportation Authority are involved in high-profile consolidation efforts.
Brokers say government agencies are now putting every square foot in their portfolios under a magnifying glass. [more]

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s deal to bring both the Apple Store and Danny Meyer’s Shake Shack to Grand Central Terminal moved one step closer to reality this afternoon when the agency’s finance committee gave the plan its official go-ahead. The Apple Store will take over the terminal’s east balcony from Charlie Palmer’s Metrazur restaurant, as well as the northeast balcony, which is currently vacant, according to the agenda from today’s meeting. The initial term of the roughly 23,000-square-foot lease will be 10 years with the option for two, five-year renewal periods. Shake Shack’s 10-year lease will be for a 2,270-square-foot space in the dining concourse. [more]