While the possibility of media conglomerate Time Warner leaving the building that boasts its name is not new, an article from the Hollywood Reporter pointed to the possibility of a more drastic move for the company — a move away from New York City.

Time Warner’s CFO John Martin told a conference for entertainment investors in San Francisco yesterday that the company will be considering options outside Gotham when its leases at 10 buildings in the Big Apple — which cost the firm approximately $300 million per year — are up in 2017. A source told the Hollywood Reporter that parts of New York state, New Jersey and Connecticut are under consideration. [more]

From left: 15 CPW, Time Warner Center and the Plaza

Not only is the high-end of the Manhattan housing market healthy, but in some respects it’s performing just as well as it did during the market’s peak, according to the Wall Street Journal. Seven deals worth more than $30 million have been recorded this year, not including Sanford Weill’s recent $88 million sale, the most since 2008 and the third-most ever. Further, the $6,000 per square foot price point that was noteworthy even in 2008 has become somewhat more commonplace, the Journal said.

The astronomical prices are buoyed by a shortage of ultra-luxury apartments, according to brokers, as the world’s wealthiest people are moving assets right now. [more]

A new, 2,292-square-foot unit hitting the market at the Park Imperial building on 56th Street is asking $8.3 million, more than double what its owner, Los Angeles real estate finance executive David Lasaee, paid for it in 2005. The reason for the markup, according to a source with knowledge of the listing, is the rarity of high-end, park-adjacent properties on the market today.

Unit 69A, purchased for $4.1 by the Arca Advisors exec, was recently renovated and designed by social fixture, interior-design guru and wife of money manager Boykin Curry, Celerie Kemble.

“The renovation is partly influencing the price,” the source said, “but there’s also nothing left on the market. If you have an $8 million buyer who wants a view of the park, there’s nothing to show them.”
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Latin crooner Ricky Martin is renting a $32,500 a month, five-bedroom condominium unit at the Lucida building on East 85th Street and Lexington Avenue while in New York to play Argentine Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara in the Broadway revival of “Evita,” the New York Post reported.

Martin, who previously owned condos in both the Time Warner Center and 40 Bond Street, also toured the Upper East Side’s Empire and Isis buildings on his search for a temporary pad for himself and twin sons Matteo and Valentino, the Post said.

Dennis Mangone and Pablo Alfaro of Prudential Douglas Elliman represented Martin in the lease deal. [more]

Stephen Ross, chairman of the Related Companies, and the Time Warner Center

The Samsung Experience showroom is departing the Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle in January, the New York Post reported, as 10-year leases signed at the center when the project opened begin to expire.

Samsung’s departure from the third floor, as well as the closure of the Borders bookstore space on the second floor, which is now vacant after the chain went bankrupt, leaves building owner the Related Companies with some interesting leasing options, the Post noted. The 10,000-square-foot Samsung space could be combined with the Borders space to create a duplex. [more]

From the November issue: That New York City draws property hunters from around the world is no surprise.

In fact, 15 percent of buyers in the city today are international, according to Elizabeth Stribling, president of Stribling & Associates.

But just how big a force are foreign nationals in the highest reaches of the residential market? To find out, The Real Deal combed through the priciest deals of this year so far, relying on data provided by listings aggregator StreetEasy, to find out which of the biggest transactions involved international buyers and sellers. Of the top 20 deals, six had one or more parties from outside the U.S., according to property records, press reports and interviews. [more]

From left: Time Warner Center and a rendering of Hudson Yards

Now that Coach is on the books, Hudson Yards’ next office tenant could be Time Warner, according to the New York Post. The namesake of Related Companies’ Columbus Circle complex has been looking to downsize from the 864,000-square-foot space it owns at the Time Warner Center, and other city office space, in an effort to cut costs.

Related is considering offering the media giant an opportunity to swap its space for a smaller home in Hudson Yards. [more]

The new addition to John Jay College
on 11th AvenueFrom the October issue: Bigness is back. By “bigness,” I do not mean height — rather, I refer to a kind of hulking squatness, an unapologetic, as-of-right occupancy of a plot of land — without any namby-pamby purchase of “air rights,” or any rising up in a zigguratted setback to heights made possible by the construction of some cynically insufficient, “privately owned public space.”

Two recent and conspicuous examples of this new bigness are the Lucida and the Brompton, which occupy the southeast corners of 86th Street at Lexington and Third Avenues, respectively. These structures hark back to the days before the 1916 legislation that mandated how high a building could rise in New York relative to its footprint.

But an even more striking instance of this upstart subgenre is on the West Side — the addition to John Jay College of Criminal Justice (part of the City University of New York) that has just opened in time for the beginning of the new school year. [more]

David Childs (photo by Marc Scrivo)From the September issue: David Childs is chairman emeritus and consulting design partner at Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. He’s designed the Time Warner Center at Columbus Circle, Worldwide Plaza and the New York Mercantile Exchange. He also worked on the National Mall master plan and Constitution Gardens in Washington, D.C. Childs has served as the chairman of the National Capital Planning Commission, the federal agency charged with overseeing development projects in the nation’s capital, and as the chairman of the Commission of Fine Arts in Washington, both Presidential appointments. But he is perhaps most known for designing the 1,776-foot-tall One World Trade Center, which is slated to be topped off in 2012. Click here for the complete Q & A. [more]

Time Warner is moving forward with its plan to possibly move out of the Time Warner Center and consolidate its operations at new headquarters elsewhere to save costs, the Wall Street Journal reported. In a memo to all New York-based employees yesterday, the company said it would be undertaking a broad reevaluation of its real estate, with a formal plan expected next year. Time Warner moved to Columbus Circle in 2004, where it had partnered with Related Companies to build the David Childs-designed building that is its company headquarters now. Comments