Tenants of Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village have received an alternative partnership offer just days after it was revealed they had partnered with Brookfield Asset Management to explore buying the properties, Crain’s reported.

A partnership between developer Gerald Guterman and Westwood Capital issued letters to tenants today, reminding them of a proposal Guterman and Westwood sent them in 2010. The duo’s plan involves converting all units in the complex to co-ops, which the tenants would then buy for close to $175 per square foot. [more]

Stuyvesand Town and City Council member Daniel Garodnick

The tenant association for Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village voted yesterday to partner with Brookfield Asset Management to explore buying the properties, the New York Times reported. The association is aiming to convert the complexes, with 11,232 apartments in total, into an affordable condominium or cooperative in a plan that could see residents choose to buy their apartments or remain as rent-regulated tenants.

The tenants are hoping that the lenders who control the property, who are represented by CW Capital, will sell it to them rather than someone who may wish to displace the properties’ long-term residents, the Times said. [more]

Richard Lefrak’s organization is a possible contender for Stuy Town

Tishman Speyer Properties and BlackRock Realty were pilloried for aggressively pushing out tenants and running afoul of the city’s J-51 tax abatement rules. But some of the firms that are being mentioned as possible replacements as owners or managers at Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village — such as developers LeFrak Organization and Rose Associates, and real estate firm Stonehenge Partners — come with their own skeletons in the closet. The New York City real estate world is bracing for a struggle among titans for management or ownership of the 11,200-unit housing complex on Manhattan’s East Side following the announcement  last month that the owners would cede control. Potential parties must negotiate with special servicer CWCapital Asset Management, the majority of which is owned by Canadian institutional fund Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec. The special servicer represents the interests of the bondholders of the securitized loans on Stuyvesant Town. Other firms being bandied about as possible investors or investors are WL Ross & Co., Centerbridge Partners, Related Companies, WinnCompanies and Prudential Douglas Elliman, according to media reports. The thorny city tax abatement program known as J-51 that contributed to the forfeiture of Stuy Town and Peter Cooper Village has dogged one of the leading contenders for the site, LeFrak. [more]

Chart clarification: While CBRE data puts Durst’s portfolio at 7.2 million square feet, a Durst spokesperson later said that figure is actually 9 million.

Asking rents plunged for some of Midtown’s top landlords last year as they competed for the few tenants searching for space in a weak leasing market, but their reductions helped keep their vacancy rates below the market average, experts said. The family-owned Durst Organization dropped its asking rents to $60.82 per square foot in November 2009 from $113.15 per square foot in August 2008, near the pricing peak of the leasing market, according to the most recent data available on Midtown’s top 10 landlords from commercial services firm CB Richard Ellis. The Real Deal compared data from August 2008 to November 2009 for the top 10 landlords in Midtown ranked by square feet owned. The 46 percent decline was the steepest among Midtown’s top 10 landlords, who control 93 million square feet, or about 41 percent of the market. Landlord and tenant leasing broker Cynthia Wasserberger, a managing director at commercial firm Jones Lang LaSalle said the landlords cut prices to attract tenants and keep their buildings filled. “I think all the landlords got aggressive. They were pretty swift in their decision to respond to the market,” Wasserberger said. [more]

After months of controversy surrounding Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village, embattled group Tishman Speyer Properties is finally getting some good news. Over 1.05 million square feet of Tishman-owned space was leased in December, the Post’s Lois Weiss noted today, and on the heels of yesterday’s news that CB Richard Ellis had renewed its 125,000-square-foot lease at the firm’s MetLife Building, more lease signings are making news. Simon & Schuster has reportedly signed a deal to extend its lease for five more years at Tishman’s 1230 Sixth Avenue, while Michael Kors has extended his lease for 15 more years at 11 West 42nd Street. Although Robert Speyer, president of Tishman, wouldn’t comment on the tenants for Weiss’ report, he did say that he believes “rents are back to 2005 [levels].”

While many of the money center banks are sitting on the sidelines when it comes to providing mortgage financing, Chinese, German and European financial institutions and insurance companies are dipping their feet into the water to provide much needed financing for commercial real estate. Foreign and domestic lenders and insurance companies prefer to lend to real estate investment trusts. Later this month, a syndicate led by Westdeutsche ImmobilienBank is expected to close on a $135 million loan on the 25-story office tower at 300 Park Avenue. The 15 floors of the tower serve as the world headquarters for Colgate Palmolive. The borrowing entity is controlled by Tishman Speyer Properties. As reported in The Real Deal today, a syndicate of banks led by the Bank of China, provided SL Green Realty with a five-year, floating rate mortgage for $475 million for the landmark Times Square office tower at 1515 Broadway. The new mortgage replaces the former $625 million mortgage that was due to mature in November 2010.  More
[more]

The owners of Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village reached an
interim agreement today on rents with plaintiffs who won a New York
State Court of Appeals ruling in October over illegal rent increases in
apartment buildings with J-51 tax abatements. The agreement, in the form of an order issued by State Supreme Court Justice Richard Lowe (click here for the document), was approved this morning, a spokesperson for the Stuy Town owners said in an e-mail. It would also convert the lawsuit filed by a limited number
of parties to a class action lawsuit, broadly covering Stuy Town. The East Side complex’s owners, Tishman Speyer Properties and BlackRock
Realty, negotiated an adjustment to rents in each apartment in the
lawsuit to a rent-stabilized level, a statement said. The
residents would also be covered by certain rights under rent
stabilization laws, including succession and renewal rights. “In addition, Tishman Speyer and BlackRock have reached agreement with
counsel for the plaintiffs on a more inclusive, six-month agreement
covering a wider range of unresolved issues beyond those addressed in
the interim agreement. The six-month agreement, which is intended to
achieve an expedited resolution of the plaintiffs’ case, is contingent upon
consent by CW Capital, the special servicer acting on behalf of the
property’s senior lenders,” a statement by Tishman Speyer and attorneys
for the residents said. TRD [more]

The recent ruling in favor of tenants at Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village initially put the city’s landlords on the defensive, but now property owners are asking if the city might owe them money because of the decision. Frank Ricci, director of governmental affairs at the landlord trade group Rent Stabilization Association, said he has fielded calls from “dozens” of landlords asking if the city might owe them for overpayment in taxes. And in recent weeks the law firm Belkin Burden Wenig & Goldman raised more questions in a bulletin, including whether the city must pay landlords for lost tax abatements. Adding to the potential chaos, Stephen Meister, a partner who specializes in real estate law at the firm Meister Seelig & Fein, said he had spoken with building owners who might want to leave the city-run J-51 tax abatement program altogether. [more]

From the October issue: As commercial buildings change hands and landlords seek to squeeze more
profit out of their properties, full-service brokerage firms are
sharpening their knives for what insiders believe will be a feeding
frenzy for new office leasing opportunities. A building’s leasing agent — a firm such as CB Richard Ellis or
Cushman & Wakefield — represents the landlord in leasing
negotiations, and such contracts often are packaged with overall
building management. Unlike the residential new development condo market, where buildings
change marketing agencies frequently, most agents at commercial
buildings remain in place at a building for years with very little
turnover, records show.

New York City-based real estate companies have increased their Washington lobbying expenditures by more than a quarter this year, as the industry battles a severe downturn and Congress considers a raft of transformative legislation, federal data shows. Eleven city-based firms such as Tishman Speyer Properties, Forest City Ratner and Arverne East Development, together spent a total of $655,000 in the first six months of the year, compared with $510,000 in the same period a year ago, an increase of 28 percent, according to The Real Deal’s analysis of public lobbying records released this month. The companies made the lobbying expenditures for a variety of reasons, including monitoring transportation, economic development and tax issues. The quarterly reports are filed with the Senate Office of Public Records by the lobbying firms to show how much they have been paid by their clients and for what purpose. [more]