From left: Vornado Realty Trust Chairman Steven Roth, Patrick Foye, executive director of Port Authority, and 20 Times SquareVornado Realty Trust has abandoned its plan to build a 40-story tower atop the Port Authority Bus Terminal after its Chinese investment partner chose to invest the $600 million earmarked for the tower in another Midtown property, the New York Times reported.

Vornado had been in talks with Port Authority of New York & New Jersey to build the tower at 42nd Street and Eighth Avenue since 1999. The tower would have been designed by Rogers Stirk Harbour & Partners, and included a garden atop the existing four-story terminal. As part of the agreement, the developer was also on the hook for a $400 million renovation of the bus terminal that would have brought 18 new gates to the bus hub. [more]

Gates at the Port Authority Bus Terminal are getting so crowded that after dropping off passengers, many NJ Transit buses return empty to New Jersey to park for the day, causing unnecessary congestion and higher costs, according to the Wall Street Journal. Each day, about 6,000 buses carry nearly 225,000 passengers back and forth from New York to New Jersey and the current facility isn’t vast enough to allow for smooth operation of the buses, according to Stephen Napolitano, general manager of the Lincoln Tunnel and the Port Authority Bus Terminal. That’s one reason the Port Authority is eager to strike a deal with Vornado Realty Trust, which has held on-again-off-again talks for much of the last decade to build a tower above the bus terminal that would yield $250 million to add gates and improve operations. [more]

From left: Stephen Ross and Steve Roth

No one heeded his advice last year, but Steve Roth still wants the city
to upzone Park Avenue.
The Vornado Realty Trust chairman, who traded lighthearted jabs
at the Real Estate Board of New York’s quarterly luncheon this
afternoon with his decidedly more staid development rival, Related
Companies boss Stephen Ross, paused mid-sentence, momentarily
holding his tongue so as not to offend what was likely a room full of
Park Avenue landlords, brokers and investors.
“Oh, I don’t give a shit,” he ultimately decided, to roars of laughter.
Most Park Avenue office buildings are currently “hanging on by
their fingernails to being technologically obsolete,” Roth continued,
proposing that the city council rezone the thoroughfare so that older,
existing buildings could be torn down and replaced with larger, newer
ones. [more]

Landlords are turning to artists to fill unsightly vacant commercial space with artwork, something rarely seen before the economic downturn. Like those landlords who have donated space to artists, commercial property managers are renting out space at a discounted rate, typically for a few weeks. Right now, nearly 50 works of art occupy the Port Authority Bus Terminal, for example, while Brooklyn’s Flatbush Avenue Extension has welcomed a handful of pastel drawings and sculptures. Jed Walentas, head of the Brooklyn development group Two Trees Management, said that the short, flexible leases can be ideal for landlords with a dearth of tenants. “Any sort of activity is better than no activity The question is, who can you find that’s going to make an investment in a space,” Walentas said. “Often it’s the artist.”

One of New York’s largest concrete-testing companies has been indicted on charges of falsifying concrete strength reports. Stallone Testing Laboratories and its director, William Bayer, were arraigned in State Supreme Court yesterday. The charges come on the heels of Testwell Laboratories’ October indictment, which included charges of fraud and corruption. The district attorney’s office listed over 90 city projects, including the World Trade Center transportation hub, that they believe have false test reports, including the Port Authority Bus Terminal and the World Trade Center transit hub.

Vornado Realty Trust’s agreement to be the designated developer of an
office tower atop the Port Authority Bus Terminal is set to expire in
August. To keep the deal, Steven Roth, Vornado’s chairman, would have
to pay $500 million over the 99-year term of the lease. Vornado never
found a tenant for the proposed 1.3 million-square-foot tower, so the
continuation of the agreement seems unlikely. But an official familiar
with the negotiations told the New York Observer that Vornado and the
Port Authority are discussing a plan in which Vornado would expand the
terminal’s retail space. [more]