From left: Rockrose Development's Henry Elghanayan, 575 Lexington Avenue and Silverstein Properties President Larry Silverstein
Rockrose Development is in talks to acquire 575 Lexington Avenue for $370 million, according to Bloomberg News, which cited a Real Estate Alert report.
The 35-story, 585,000-square-foot office tower, between East 51st and East 52nd streets, is owned by a partnership of Silverstein Properties and the California State Teachers’ Retirement System. [more]
With more than 600 stalled construction sites currently blighting the city thanks to the recession, developers have begun renting out their vacant lots, sometimes free of charge, to ventures that can lure foot traffic to the area. According to the New York Times, the developers hope the increased traffic will improve the neighborhood — and sales and leasing figures — in advance of their projects breaking ground.
For example, Alexandria Real Estate Equities has fostered a farm on the stalled site of the second Alexandria Center for Life Science tower. Chef Tom Colicchio’s adjacent restaurant Riverpark uses produce from the farm, a set-up that has attracted interest to what would otherwise be a construction fence. [more]
A vacant Long Island City bank building and adjacent parking lot have been transformed into a dance and swim party venue called the Palms, featuring dumpster pools, cocktails and music, the New York Daily News reported.
Rockrose Development saw a similar project by an arts group called Chashama at the Donnell Library building on 53rd Street and contacted the group about bringing a similar experience to the lot at 26-01 Jackson Avenue and three other possible spaces in the area.
“We wanted to activate the area and get some life going in these empty buildings,” said Patricia Dunphy, a senior vice president with Rockrose, which has a 31-story residential building, the Club by Rockrose, in the neighborhood at 4705 Center Boulevard. “There’s a lot of folks living in Long Island City that are anxious to have things to do.”
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Financing for New York City real estate projects is back. Of the top 35 deals done in the last 12 months, 24 were refinancing and nine were new loans taken out of acquisitions, according to Crain’s. The largest deal was an $800 million refinancing of 245 Park Avenue, between 46th and 47th streets, for which Brookfield Asset Management and ING Clarion tapped the Bank of China in September 2010. It was followed closely by Boston Properties’ $700 million loan from MetLife for the Citigroup Center at 153 East 53rd Street, between Third and Lexington avenues, in March 2011, and a $650 million refinancing of One Bryant Park between 42nd and 43rd streets in June last year by Bank of America. [more]
Extell Development, one of the city’s biggest real estate firms, is scheduled for a court
hearing next Tuesday, amid allegations that the company’s president, Gary Barnett, fired one
of his top executives, Pamela Samuels, and later refused to pay her millions of dollars because he claimed none of the 17 projects in which she held equity were profitable. Samuels, in a suit filed late February in New York State Supreme Court, alleged that
Extell and Barnett committed fraud, unjust enrichment and breach of contract and she
also demanded they pay her remaining salary of $1.1 million. Lawyers for Extell filed
a motion Monday demanding the case go to arbitration and scheduling a May 10 court
hearing. [more]
A growing number of New York City-based real estate firms are purchasing office buildings in the nation’s capital, according to Crain’s. The vacancy rate in Washington, D.C. is 11.2 percent — besting the national central business district average of 14.4 percent, and approaching Manhattan’s 10.5 percent rate. Meanwhile, leasing activity in Washington jumped 30 percent last year. As a result, Tishman Speyer, the Rockefeller Group, TF Cornerstone and TIAA-CREF have purchased office towers in Washington in recent months, and last month Rockrose Development Corp. spent $43 million for a 180,000-square-foot building at 1150 18th Street N.W. [more]
A year after Thomas and Frederick Elghanayan formed TF Cornerstone, breaking off from their brother Henry and the Rockrose Development Corporation, Frederick, 62, opened up about the young company’s success so far. “People said it was impossible to get construction financing, but we’ve had a lot of interest in banks giving us construction money,” Frederick told the Observer. TF Cornerstone broke ground three months ago on a 41-story, 380-unit apartment building in Long Island City — which Frederick would only refer to as “East Coast Number Four” — with the foundation slated for completion in the next two weeks. The company also gave foundation orders last week for another New York City building, “so we actually have our hands very full right now,” Frederick said. [more]
The Whitney Museum of American Art has signed a lease for the top two floors of a 15-story building at 300 Park Avenue South, at the corner of 22nd Street, in the Madison Square Park area, planning to relocate their administrative headquarters from the Upper East Side, the Wall Street Journal reported. The move is part of a larger $680 million plan to finance a new six-story museum that the Whitney is building in the Meatpacking District. To raise money for the project, the museum recently sold eight properties on the Upper East Side for $95 million. ” [more]
From the January issue: New retail is trickling into Long Island City to catch up with the luxury condo and rental building boom of the last four years.
Tony restaurants and stores — from spas to gourmet food shops — are filling in among the waterfront properties and along Jackson Avenue and Vernon Boulevard.
Despite the struggles Long Island City has seen on the residential side of the market because of large amounts of new inventory, retail in the area has seen a growth spurt, even as it has been slowed somewhat by the recession.
The area still has one of the largest concentrations of industrial businesses in New York City, but now old lumberyards, electrical shops and food processors commingle with trendy cafés and boutiques.
“There was no retail market 10 years ago, because this area was warehouses,” noted William Jordan, a vice president at CB Richard Ellis’ outer-boroughs office.
The population growth has eclipsed other neighborhoods (the area added 3,640 units of housing between 2002 and 2008, according to the Long Island City BID). However, the neighborhood has been light on some basic retail services, said Robin Abrams, an executive vice president at Lansco Corp., which does work in Long Island City.
Now that seems to be changing. more
From the December issue: TF Cornerstone — the real estate firm formed by two of the three Elghanayan brothers who ran the Rockrose Development Corp. before it split up earlier this year — has a strong head start on other companies launching in this climate. The firm kept 15 properties from Rockrose’s portfolio, including 505 West 37th Street, whose 837 units are set to be completed in January. The company gets its initials from the two brothers, Tom (the chairman) and Frederick (the president), at its helm. While the original empire that the three Elghanayans created may now be defunct, the empires of the ancient world, as depicted in stone busts and art books, are intact in Frederick’s office at 290 Park Avenue South. (See his desk after the jump.) More
