From the South Florida website: Andrew Carmellini, owner of hip New York restaurant the Dutch, is opening a Miami Beach branch of the eatery, he told the New York Times. He called the decision a sort of “homecoming,” as his father is from Miami. “[Miami's] always been my second home,” he said. “My grandfather ran clubs and hotels and my grandmother still lives there.” Carmellini and business partners Josh Pickard and Luke Ostrom will operate the restaurant, which is slated to open inside the W Hotel on Collins Avenue in November, replacing Solea.  [more]

Midtown residents are none too happy with developer Joe Moinian, CEO of the Moinian Group, judging by some incidents last week, the New York Post reported.

A small fire broke out Thursday at a five-story building being demolished by Moinian to build a hotel at 237 West 54th Street, drawing fire engines and emergency trucks. Tenants of the adjacent building were forced to vacate. “There was a lot of smoke and we’re all nervous wrecks,” said one resident of 243 West 54th Street.

The residents, it seems, have had ongoing issues with the demolition. “It feels like earthquakes and bombs going off next door,” one resident said. Another tenant, Joanne Lockman, emailed the Post: “Waking up to a swaying building is scary on a good day.” [more]

Andre Balazs and the former Trans World Airlines Flight Center

Hotelier Andre Balazs is one of several developers scoping out Eero Saarinen’s vacant terminal at John F. Kennedy International Airport after the Port Authority of New York & New Jersey offered up the opportunity to build a new boutique hotel there earlier this month. According to the Wall Street Journal, Balazs’ firm — as well as Hoboken W Hotel builder Ironstate Development and WQB Architecture, which was responsible for the Lambs Club building hotel conversion on West 44th Street — appeared on a list of attendees at a recent site visit. [more]

The special servicer of the W New York-Union Square’s $115 million mortgage wants a bankruptcy judge to block a plan that would transfer ownership of the hotel to Host Hotels & Resorts, a publicly traded real estate investment trust. In court papers filed Monday, LNR said the mortgage debt holders it represents haven’t agreed to the plan because it would “clearly negatively impact the senior mortgage loan and run afoul of the senior mortgage loan documents,” the Wall Street Journal reported. The mortgage holder is concerned about liability releases granted under the plan and a proposed lease change. The plan also settles pending litigation involving the companies and their secured creditors. The U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del., will consider confirming the plan at a hearing Friday. [WSJ]

[more]

W New York – Union Square

LEM Mezzanine, a Philadelphia-based mezzanine lender that acquired W New York – Union Square
in a 2009 foreclosure sale, has reached an agreement to settle a
complicated series of bankruptcy cases and sell the property to a new
venture, led by Host Hotels [more]

The 270-room W Hotel in Union Square changed hands in December after the private equity division of Dubai World defaulted on a $117 million mezzanine loan. But the lender, LEM Mezzanine, could lose the hotel in the coming months as a result of its filing for bankruptcy protection earlier this year, the New York Times reported. Mezzanine loans, which are secured by stock or other ownership stakes in a company, became a popular form of secondary financing during the real estate boom, offering high returns to investors and high interest rates for borrowers. There is an estimated $100 billion in mezzanine loans outstanding across the country. But despite built-in risks, lenders say these loans are beginning to resurface. “It’s become something people want to do again,” said William Shanahan, a vice chairman at CB Richard Ellis who specializes in investment properties in New York. “I think it’s fair to say that right now the desire to place mezzanine debt outweighs the demand for it, but a lot of people are looking to put mezzanine loans on their properties.” Since mezzanine loans come second in priority to the first mortgage and are typically secured by stock in the company, many building owners who financed property at the height of the real estate bubble, including the proprietors of the W Hotel, were at the mercy of mezzanine lenders after the economy soured. [NYT]

[more]

Bob Siegel, co-founder of Gwathmey Siegel & Associates Architects

Bob Siegel who co-founded Gwathmey Siegel & Associates Architects in 1968, said his staff numbers 40 today, down from 65 two years ago. Plus, a few major projects are winding down, “and there are not a lot of replacements coming in” to the firm’s sole office, in Manhattan, Siegel said. One recently completed project is the new W Hoboken Hotel and Residence, a 26-story high-rise in New Jersey with 225 rooms and 30 condominium units, while the Financial District’s under-construction W New York Downtown Hotel & Residences, whose 58 stories contain 217 rooms and 159 residences, is set to debut within weeks, though the project has been somewhat troubled: the city has slapped it with 30 stop-work orders, and it’s wrapping up two years behind schedule. In an interview with The Real Deal, Siegel, 70, spoke about why his favorite New York neighborhood is Battery Park City, what apartment buildings will look like later this century and coping with the death of the firm’s other founder, Charles Gwathmey, last year. [more]

Istithmar World, the former owner of the W New York Union Square hotel, filed suit yesterday to challenge a series of bankruptcy filings by a Philadelphia-based private equity fund that acquired the property in a December foreclosure auction. The suit comes just one week after LEM Mezzanine threw the property ownership into Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection to block DekaBank, a senior mezzanine lender, from holding another foreclosure auction. Isithmar asked a U.S. Bankruptcy Court judge in Delaware for an injunction that would prevent an affiliate of Philadelphia-based LEM from moving forward with a Chapter 11 bankruptcy it filed March 23. “In the weeks leading up to March 23, 2010, the date of the filing of the petition, LEM, through one or more of the individual defendants, engaged in a series of failed attempts to extort money out of DekaBank and Istithmar, in exchange for LEM’s agreement not to cause the voluntary bankruptcy filings by the Mezz 2 borrower, the Mezz 1 borrower or the hotel owner,” lawyers for Istithmar wrote in the complaint. [more]

The new owners of the W New York-Union Square hotel threw the troubled property into bankruptcy protection Tuesday afternoon, the day before senior lender DekaBank was scheduled to auction off a loan on the hotel.
LEM Mezzanine, a Philadelphia-based private equity fund, previously bought the 270-room property in December for $2 million, plus the assumption of $212 million in debt, in a so-called mezzanine foreclosure auction. The W, located at 201 Park Avenue South, was auctioned off after the Dubai financial crisis left Isithmar, the private equity arm of state-controlled Dubai World, scrambling to sell assets. “Efforts to restructure the remaining mezzanine debt have not yet been completely successful,” LEM said in a statement. “Today’s filing was intended to provide additional time to complete that process, and emerge with a healthy balance sheet that allows the hotel to continue to thrive in a competitive marketplace.” Comments

Starchitect Frank Williams, known for his geometric-style Manhattan skyscrapers and international influence, has died at age 73. Williams made a notable impact on the New York City skyline, helping create over 20 buildings in the city, many of which are visible from Central Park, according to the New York Times. His portfolio includes the 57-story Trump Palace at 200 East 69th Street on the corner of Third Avenue, the tallest building on the Upper East Side, the Four Seasons at 57 East 57th Street and the 55-story W hotel in Times Square. Even so, Williams told The Real Deal in 2007 that he enjoyed spending time under the radar. “He’s a very talented architect who doesn’t like bragging about his work even though he should,” Donald Trump told The Real Deal at the time.