From left: Governor Andrew Cuomo, Real Estate Board of New York President Steve Spinola and Tishman Speyer President Rob SpeyerDuring the quiet month of December in an off-election year, a political lobbying group led by REBNY President Steve Spinola and Tishman Speyer President Rob Speyer has spent $2.8 million praising Governor Andrew Cuomo in television ads, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The ads, approved by the three-person executive team of the Committee to Save New York (the third member is Kathryn Wylde, president of the Partnership for New York City), claim that despite challenges Cuomo is “getting things done,” including creating a solid jobs plan and lowering taxes. [more]

From left: Council member Gail Brewer, a Duane Reade and Bank of America on the Upper West Side and REBNY President Steven SpinolaTired of chain drugstores and banks replacing mom-and-pop shops on the Upper West Side, City Council member Gail Brewer has been trying to implement zoning laws that would restrict larger stores from moving into the area, the New York Post reported. She said the trend is compromising retail variety for residents of the area.

Brewer has been meeting with the Department of City Planning to devise legislation that works towards that goal, including laws that set a minimum number of stores per block and maximum amount of ground-floor frontage along key Upper West Side corridors. [more]

Governor Andrew Cuomo is calling for the board of the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey to approve the consolidation of the Moynihan Station Development Corporation and Lower Manhattan Development Corporation’s operations into the Port Authority, according to a statement released today. He is also recommending that Patrick Foye, currently the Governor’s Deputy Secretary of Economic Development, serve as executive director of the Port Authority, replacing the recently resigned Chris Ward.

“Too many different agencies doing the same or closely related work makes little sense,” Cuomo said in a statement. “The Port Authority is best situated to oversee the development at Moynihan Station and the orderly wind down of the LMDC and these changes will consolidate responsibility within the [Port] Authority.”  -- Miranda Neubauer [more]

Concrete workers that abandoned some construction sites in the wake of their expired labor contract were ordered to return to their jobs Tuesday night. Crain’s reported that an arbitrator ruled that concrete laborers at West 57th Street, Madison Square Garden, Barclays Center and Tower 2 of the World Trade Center were in violation of a no-strike provision in labor agreements at those sites.

The Cement and Concrete Workers District Council plans to appeal the ruling, Crain’s said, as it will argue that the no-strike agreement is not applicable since the contract expired in June. But by Wednesday workers at all four sites were back on the job. A similar hearing is scheduled today for walkouts at the new Weill Cornell Medical College on East 69th Street. [more]

From left: Steven Spinola, president of the REBNY; Eric Anton, executive managing director at Eastern Consolidated; Debra Shultz, managing director at Manhattan Mortgage; David Heiden, a principal at W Financial and Barry Sternlicht, chairman and CEO of Starwood Capital Group

As the debt ceiling debate nears a critical juncture in Washington D.C., real estate executives in New
York are concerned that absent a final resolution, the fragile recovery will be short circuited by a sudden
spike in interest rates.

Steven Spinola, president of the Real Estate Board of New York, the 12,000-member trade organization,
said the industry’s main concern is the impact a debt ceiling default could have on projects financed
with tax exempt bonds.

“If there is no agreement and our credit rating goes down, what will that do to interest rates?” Spinola
said. [more]

Over three-quarters of New York brokers believe that next quarter’s values and sales will be better than or the same as last quarter, according to a second-quarter survey conducted by the Real Estate Board of New York and released today. The survey found that 77 percent of respondents reported closing rental transactions at or above asking rent in the second quarter, up 16 percent from the quarter prior. Additionally, 13 percent more brokers reported closing rental transactions and 4 percent more reported closing sales compared to last quarter. Ten percent more brokers reported closing sales at or above asking price compared to what brokers reported in the second quarter of 2010. – Miranda Neubauer [more]

New York City home sales prices inched upward, while sales activity blossomed in the second quarter of 2011, according to a report released today by the Real Estate Board of New York.

Sales activity increased 10 percent from the first quarter of 2011, but is down four percent from the same period a year ago due to “unseasonable fluctuations” caused by the looming expiration of the homebuyer’s tax credit, according to Steve Spinola, REBNY’s president. Meanwhile, sales prices increased 2 percent from last quarter and 3 percent from the same period a year ago. In the second quarter “we saw a return to normal cyclical market patterns,” Spinola said. – Adam Fusfeld [more]

Retail rents in Lower Manhattan jumped 23 percent in the spring of 2011
compared to the fall of 2010, according to a report released today by
the Real Estate Board of New York, and apparently that’s because of the  news coverage World Trade Center construction has garnered. “Lower
Manhattan has been receiving national and international attention as a
result of the progress at the World Trade Center site. The rise in
asking rents for retail space shows that retailers are looking to
capitalize on the increase in pedestrian traffic expected there in the
years to come,” said Steven Spinola, REBNY’s president. TRD Comments

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Real Estate Board of New York president Steve Spinola appeared on Capital Tonight (see video above) to discuss the role he played with the Committee to Save New York, an advocacy group that raised $10 million to support Governor Andrew Cuomo’s budget. But now that the budget has passed with relatively little controversy, Spinola said the organization still has about half of that money, which it plans to spend to fight the millionaire tax. Spinola also discussed rent regulation, saying that while he supports the extension of the current laws, he doesn’t want to see any additional protection for rent-stabilized units. Comments

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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]