The floorplan for Shulsky’s unit in 812 Fifth Avenue (click image for larger version)

Rena Shulsky, the real estate magnate and environmental activist, has put her 812 Fifth Avenue penthouse duplex back on the market, with a new broker and a freshly chopped price.

Time Equities’ Javier Lattanzio now has the listing, and has priced it at $9.9 million. The three-bedroom duplex co-op unit was previously on the market with Ariel Tirosh and Peter Schwartz from Prudential Douglas Elliman, who listed it at $11.75 million last year, then dropped the price to $10.75 million this January before taking it off the market in early April.

Shulsky is the CEO of longtime New York City commercial developer Shire Realty and co-founder of the non-profit organization Green Seal. She originally purchased the three-bedroom apartment in 2007 for $9.23 million, according to city documents. The eight-room spread, with both city and park views, occupies the top two floors of the building and features a wraparound terrace.
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Sunset Park’s Federal Building No. 2, the former Navy warehouse near the waterfront, could be the largest vacant building for sale in the city at 1.1 million square feet. The city’s Economic Development Corporation, which is trying to turn the property into an affordable manufacturing space for the city’s displaced industrial tenants, issued a request for proposals in December and has since received six bids from parties including the Clarett Group and Industry City Associates, ranging from $500,000 to $10 million. But between extensive and necessary renovations, zoning restrictions and property taxes of $1 million per year, taking on the 94-year-old structure will prove difficult for whoever winds up with the keys. Under Industry City’s proposal, the city’s idea of leasing space to light manufacturers would be expanded to include technology start-ups and art studios, in order to stir up enough interested tenants. The last time the federal government tried to sell the building was in 2006, when the winning bidder, Time Equities, withdrew from the deal after spending $1.5 million in engineering and architectural fees to create the plans because of economic concerns. Time Equities did not submit another proposal this time around, said chairman Francis Greenburger, because “our reading of the market hasn’t really changed.”
[NYT]

Source: Time Equities

The dollar volume of office condominium sales in Manhattan slipped by nearly a third last year to its lowest level since 2005, a report released today by condo developer Time Equities shows.

The value of condos sold fell to $158 million in 2009, the weakest year since 2005 when just $49 million sold, the report, which covers 2009 sales data, shows. The volume in 2008 was $233 million.

The total amount of square feet sold fell by 42 percent to barely 220,000 last year from over 379,000 in 2008. As of the end of 2009, there were 8.2 million square feet of commercial condos in 76 buildings, Time Equities data show.

The report’s author Michael Rudder, director of sales and leasing for Time Equities, said the decline was representative of the broader sales market.
The drop, however, was not as steep as the overall 72 percent fall in Manhattan building sales volume last year as reported last month by commercial sales firm Massey Knakal Realty Services. [more]

With fewer hotel rooms under construction, hotel developers hope the reduction in new rooms will help to revive the hospitality industry.

The October 2009 STR/TWR/Dodge Construction Pipeline Report noted that the total active U.S. hotel development pipeline includes 4,089 projects comprising 435,265 rooms.

This represents a 32.7 percent decrease in the number of rooms in the total active pipeline — which includes projects in the construction, final planning and planning stages, but not in the pre planning stage — compared to October 2008.

“The number of rooms in construction fell 41.2 percent from the same time last year,” said Duane Vinson, vice president at STR. A number of planned hotels have ground to a halt in Manhattan including the Lower East Side’s 180 Ludlow Street.
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Rendering of 93 Nevins Street

The City Planning Commission voted unanimously today to approve the new Food Retail Expansion to Support Health zoning amendment. Meanwhile, sales have launched at 93 Nevins Street, an environmentally friendly townhouse development in Boerum Hill, and at at Seven Dutch Street in the Financial District. Click here for more. [more]

The global recession and the credit crisis are having an effect on new
hotel construction throughout the U.S., especially in New York City.
Total projects under construction in the U.S. have fallen 20.1 percent
since last year, with a corresponding 27.2 percent drop in the number
of rooms, according to the June 2009 STR/TWR/Dodge Construction
Pipeline Report released exclusively to HotelNewsNow.com, a division of Smith Travel Research. [more]

Francis Greenburger said Time Equities is canceling its Sunset Park plans.

Time Equities has cast aside plans to purchase and rehabilitate two
major government-owned sites along the Brooklyn waterfront in Sunset
Park, the company CEO said, citing the poor economy. The Manhattan-based real estate investment and development firm pulled
out of talks with the city’s Economic Development Corporation to buy
and rehabilitate the two locations. “Given current market conditions, Time Equities was unable to create an
economically viable business plan with the Economic Development
Corporation for the acquisition and redevelopment of Bush Terminal
buildings B and C and Federal Building No. 2,” Francis Greenburger,
chairman and CEO of Time Equities, said in a statement.

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