This month in real estate history

Olympia & York owner Paul Reichmann1992: Olympia & York files for bankruptcy

Olympia & York Developments — the world’s largest commercial real estate builder and the developer of the 8 million-square-foot World Financial Center — filed for bankruptcy protection in Canada 20 years ago this month.

At the time, the $20 billion, Toronto-based empire was the city’s largest commercial landlord, with 23 million square feet of Manhattan office space. During the bankruptcy, the city’s former first deputy mayor, John Zuccotti, was heading up the firm’s U.S. operations. Company owner Paul Reichmann, meanwhile, was in charge of global operations.

Started in the 1950s as a tile company, Olympia & York ran into trouble during the recession of the late 1980s. It was particularly vulnerable to the slowdown because of its 97-acre commercial and residential development in London known as Canary Wharf, which was leasing up slowly.

The company was liquidated in 1993. The firm’s Manhattan properties were sold off, but Brookfield Office Properties bought about 11.5 million square feet of buildings in 1996 as the portfolio was unwound. That included three of the four towers at the World Financial Center, 1 Liberty Plaza and 245 Park Avenue.

Sixth Avenue’s elevated train tracks1929: City proposes removing Sixth Avenue tracks

A New York City agency wrote in a report 83 years ago this month that property values on Sixth Avenue were being dramatically suppressed because of the elevated train line running from Trinity Place in lower Manhattan to 50th Street in midtown. The report concluded that the steel tracks should be demolished and a subway built to replace it.

The city’s Bureau of Transportation assessed real estate values on a stretch of Sixth Avenue between 53rd Street and Central Park South — where the elevated tracks had been removed in 1925 — to a portion below 23rd Street where the train was blocking sunlight. What it found was that on the stretch where the train was demolished, values jumped by 193 percent over the prior five years. That stood in stark contrast to the portion where the train still existed, where property values rose by a meager 2.6 percent during the same period.

The suggestion to tear down the elevated rail line had an almost immediate impact on investment sale activity.

“Real estate men have reported a large increase in the number of inquiries for property,” the New York Times reported a few weeks after the study was released.

Despite strong support from the city and real estate community, Sixth Avenue would have to wait another 10 years before the elevated train was demolished and replaced by a subway. The subway was fully operational by December 1940.

NYC moving day chaos1880: Tradition of moving on May 1 fades

New York City’s more than century-old tradition to begin all residential leases on May 1 began shifting to the fall, moving companies reported 132 years ago this month.

For much of the 19th century, the annual civic upheaval on the first day of May created confusion and a shortage of moving carts and vans as tenants scrambled to relocate on the same day. “All trade ceased that day because the streets were so heavily filled with traffic,” the Encyclopedia of New York City said.

The spring housing shuffle customarily began gearing up on February 1, when landlords would notify their tenants of their new rental rates, which would go into effect May 1. Those rent increases prompted many to look for new apartments over the next three months.

The shift, which was reported in the New York Times, was written about almost every year in the springtime around the turn of the century. But 1880 seems to be one of the first, if not the first, times the shift in leasing start dates was reported.

Toward the end of the 19th century, landlords shifted the start of leases to September and October, and then began to stagger them in the fall.