From the December issue: A Japanese industrial firm paid $501 per square foot for a Midtown skyscraper known as Tower 49, a price that at the time was the highest ever paid for a Manhattan office building, 22 years ago this month. The company, Kato Kagaku, purchased the 45-story midblock high-rise at 12 East 49th Street, between Fifth and Madison avenues, from the building’s developers for $301 million. The 600,000-square-foot skyscraper was built by David Solomon, G. Ware Travelstead and First Boston on an irregular parcel extending from 48th to 49th Street and opened in 1984. Kato Kagaku, a manufacturer of corn-based products, still owns the building today. The tower is home to a variety of companies, including the corporate offices of retailer Saks Fifth Avenue, financial firm Steinberg Asset Management and the sales office for metal recycling firm Schnitzer Steel Industries. The previous highest price for a major Manhattan office building was the Japanese real estate company Shuwa’s purchase in June 1986 of the American Broadcasting Corporation building at 1330 Sixth Avenue for $175 million, about $365 per square foot.

Amtrak has reached a preliminary agreement to move to the Pennsylvania Station annex planned for the James A. Farley Post Office Building, officials said yesterday. The agreement, reached after lengthy negotiations, would remove one of the most significant stumbling blocks for the Moynihan Station project: Amtrak remaining in its current location. The project aims to expand Penn Station with an annex in the post office building and create a more visible entrance to the station, which is below Madison Square Garden. In exchange for moving, Amtrak will receive some of the revenue from retail stores in the expanded station, though the details of the arrangement have not yet been fully decided. The project is likely to cost $1.1 billion to $1.5 billion, Senator Charles Schumer, an advocate of the renovations, said.

Speaker Christine Quinn (center) will push harder to redevelop Farley
Post Office (left) to replace Penn Station which she compared
unfavorably to Union Station in D.C. (right)

City Council speaker Christine Quinn told contractors and builders at a
morning breakfast today that the Moynihan Station planners need to
consider smaller or staggered plans, despite the fact that Pennsylvania
Station is an eyesore. “At this point we need to come up with a plan even if it is smaller or
phased in,” for the project located in her city council district, she
said. Quinn was speaking to members of the New York Building Congress at its
industry breakfast forum at the Hilton New York Hotel in Midtown today. The Moynihan Station plan envisions converting the James A. Farley Post
Office on Eighth Avenue and 33rd Street to a rail transit hub, part of
a wider vision to transform the Penn Station area, with a new Madison
Square Garden structure and office towers. [more]