Stephen Crane Village and Newark Mayor Cory Booker

Newark Mayor Cory Booker will announce a $50 million contract between the Newark Housing Authority and Constellation Energy on Monday, to retrofit thousands of apartments with energy efficient heat, electrical and water systems.
The program, one of the largest energy deals involving public housing in the U.S., is expected to create more than $78 million in savings over a 15-year period, officials said. The program, one of the largest energy deals involving public housing in the U.S., is expected to create more than $78 million in savings over a 15-year period, officials said.
“We’ve been looking at what other housing authorities have done in the past,” said Newark Housing Authority spokesperson Lauren Hudock. “[Residents] will see reduced energy costs and a better quality of life in general.” [more]

Hotel occupancy in Newark, NJ., dropped from 69.4 percent in 2007 to 60.6 percent in 2009. It has now spurted, and reached 66.7 percent, a 10.1 percent increase from the previous year, in 2010. An increase in hotel occupancy is just one among many signs that Newark is back in business, and many developers are seeking to cash in on the action, with financial aid from the government, as The Real Deal previously reported.

April saw contractors break ground on a new government-backed $35 million Courtyard Hotel by Marriott, developed by Highland Park’s Tucker Development, according to the National Real Estate Investor. Developer Samer Hanini (note: correction appended) is also proceeding with plans for a $23 million Hotel Indigo, gut renovating a 1912 property, The city is helping him put together the last portion of financing for the project. [more]

Two men have been charged with fraud in an alleged $200 million real estate scheme that targeted Orthodox Jews in four states and overseas, the Wall Street Journal reported. Vladimir Siforov of New York and Eliyahu Weinstein of New Jersey are expected to appear in federal court in Newark later today. Weinstein, a real estate investor, allegedly exploited the social and business customs of the Orthodox Jewish community to carry out the scheme, according to the criminal complaint filed by the U.S. Attorney’s office in Newark. Weinstein allegedly used some of his victims’ money to amass a substantial collection of art, jewelry and Judaica, worth a total of about $6.2 million. Prosecutors allege that Weinstein used his contacts in the Jewish community to meet potential investors, claiming that he had another party lined up to buy or rent the property, but the buyers were actually other members of the scheme. When investors tried to collect their earnings, Weinstein allegedly ignored them, made promises to pay or paid a smaller amount. Weinstein also maintained multiple passports so “if I want to run away, I can,” he told one investor, the complaint says. [WSJ]

[more]

Newark Mayor Cory Booker

Newark Mayor Cory Booker proposed a draconian series of emergency cuts,
including a four-day work week, cutting off all non-essential contracts
and the closing of [more]

The Nets and the team’s new home at Prudential Center in Newark

The New Jersey Nets have reached a long-anticipated deal to move to Newark’s Prudential Center for the next two years, as the team plans for the Barclays Arena to open two years from now at the Atlantic Yards project in Brooklyn.

Newark Mayor Cory Booker confirmed the deal following a special session of the New Jersey Sports and Exposition Authority this morning and furious negotiations to finalize talks with the Prudential Center officials.

“It’s extraordinarily exciting,” Booker told The Real Deal in a telephone interview. “Not only will it bring economic opportunity, energy excitement to our downtown, for the Nets they are going to receive one of the most exciting fan bases they’ve had in years and years.”

The deal ends months of speculation about the Nets, who have struggled to draw fans to the East Rutherford arena after the New Jersey Devils ditched the former Continental Airlines arena for Newark. [more]

The site at 158 Mount Olivet Avenue and Newark Mayor Corey Booker

Mayor Corey Booker is expected to announce a deal with Stamford, Conn.-based Pitney Bowes tonight, which signed a seven-year lease to relocate its international mail distribution center to Newark, a deal that will bring 180 jobs to the city and provide for another 25 new jobs over the next five years. Pitney Bowes agreed to lease 76,000 square feet of space at 158 Mount Olivet Avenue, an existing Urban Enterprise Zone location that includes 64,000 square feet of production space and 12,000 square feet of office space. The new facility will be used to sort 50 million pieces of international mail per year.
UEZ was established by the state of New Jersey in 1983 to revitalize urban communities and stimulate growth by encouraging businesses to develop and create private sector jobs through investment. “This part of our business — a combination of international mail and the pre-sorting of domestic mail — has been a very rapidly growing part of Pitney Bowes,” said spokesperson Matthew Broder, in a telephone interview. “As the network has grown, we’ve been on a pretty constant search for facilities to keep up with it.” [more]

Mayor Cory Booker and Tucker Development announced plans to develop a mixed-use hotel and retail project under the Courtyard by Marriott brand, next to the Prudential Center arena in Newark, marking that city’s first downtown hotel project in 38 years.
Marriott International will manage the 150-room hotel, while Tucker, based in Highland Park, Ill., will manage the project’s 15,000-square-foot retail space. The project is being done in partnership with the New Jersey Devils hockey team and Robert Finvarb, a Bay Harbor Islands, Fla.-based real estate development firm that has built several Courtyard, Residence Inn and Springhill Suites properties in Florida, Arizona and other states.
Newark officials have been in talks for a downtown hotel for several years, and see the Courtyard property as a sign of renewed investor interest in the city.
[more]

There is no place like New York City for national and international retailers and a few such food and coffee chains are seizing opportunities to set up shop in the New York metropolitan area.

Texas Buffalo chicken wing franchise Wingstop, which has sold nearly two billion wings, plans to open its first New York restaurant in the spring of 2010, in Astoria or Forest Hills, Queens. The company seeks to open a minimum of 25 locations in the five boroughs as well as restaurants in Fort Lee, Newark, New Brunswick and Trenton, NJ. The 15-year-old company, which has more than 600 restaurants existing or under development in 32 states, has more than 70 restaurants planned for the Northeast. [more]

John Boyd, vice president with Boyd

New York City may be a corporate epicenter of the U.S., but it comes at a cost: the city is the most expensive place to locate a corporate headquarters office, according to a study from Boyd, a group specializing in corporate site selection. The average annual cost to operate a corporate office in New York City is $30.7 million, according to the study, with San Francisco taking the second place slot, with an annual cost of $29.3 million. Cities in the greater New York area, such as Stamford and Newark, clocked in at third and fifth places, respectively, with annual costs of $29 million and $27.9 million. The labor cost associated with each market was the leading factor influencing the overall price of corporate operations, according to the report, along with real estate-related costs. John Boyd, vice president with the firm, said that this information could lead to corporations’ exodus from high-cost regions. “The corporate headquarters arena is the next frontier of corporate cost cutting,” Boyd said, adding that many companies have already taken steps to move other facilities, such as warehouses and customer support centers. “The aim now is to restructure the headquarters office. It’s because of all these new enormous cost pressures.” [more]

From left: Newark Mayor Cory Booker at Harmony Square’s groundbreaking, a rendering of phase I of the development at the corner of Third and Broad streets, and M & M Development founders Maria Yglesias and Maria Del Mar Lopez at the groundbreaking

M & M Development and Newark Mayor Cory Booker led a groundbreaking ceremony today for Harmony Square, a $10.2 million development in the city’s North Ward that combines market-rate condominiums with affordable housing. The first condo phase and the rental phase are starting at the same time with a 2010 completion date. The condo, called Condominiums@Harmony Square, will include two main developments, including 24 new condominium homes. The rental building, Apartments@Harmony Square, includes the rehabilitation of a 16-unit rental building with 10 units set aside for supportive housing, for domestic violence survivors and homeless residents looking for a stable residence. Construction of the rest of the condos — three new buildings with 21 condominium units and one duplex — will kick off next year and finish a year later. [more]