1984: Merrill signs largest lease in NYC history
Wall Street investment firm Merrill Lynch & Company signed a lease-and-purchase agreement for 3.9 million square feet in two towers at the under-construction World Financial Center in Lower Manhattan 28 years ago this month.
Merrill signed a deal with Canadian developer Olympia & York to occupy 2 World Financial Center and 4 World Financial Center, as well as purchasing a 49 percent interest in each building. The deal was the largest lease-and-purchase agreement in the city’s history — a record it still holds.
The company’s president William Schreyer (who the following year was named CEO), said the move would assure that “Merrill Lynch will remain a major corporate presence in New York City for years to come.”
The firm planned to consolidate 10,000 local employees in the towers beginning in 1986. But Merrill quickly found it had bitten off more than it could chew, and put 500,000 square feet on the market that year, hoping to get $35 per foot. By 1990, reports said it had never even occupied about 400,000 square feet of 2 World Financial Center even though it paid $42 per square foot for the space.
It’s unclear exactly what happened to all of the space, but Merrill acted as a landlord for years, subleasing out much of it to companies, including Nomura Holdings and Oppenheimer Funds.
But last year, Merrill, now part of Bank of America, signed a lease for about 750,000 square feet spread between the two buildings with Brookfield Office Properties, which purchased the four World Financial Center buildings in the 1990s.
1944: Signs of postwar building boom emerge
650 Madison Avenue
Signs of the impending postwar Manhattan office construction boom emerged even before the fighting was over as one major land owner filed plans for several skyscrapers, 68 years ago this month.
The City Bank–Farmers Trust Company — a predecessor to Citigroup — filed plans for four towers with the city, valued at $20 million and totaling nearly 3 million square feet. Together the filings represented the biggest bump in construction planning in more than 10 years, the New York Times reported.
Despite the symbolic importance of the plans, it appears the four buildings were not built as proposed. For example, the bank sought to construct a 35-story office building at 650 Madison. Instead, it sold the property, and in 1957 Commercial Investment Trust (now known as the CIT Group) built an eight-story office building there. In 1987, 19 floors were added on top of the building.
Ultimately, developers constructed approximately 19 million square feet of office space in Manhattan during the 12-year, postwar boom that kicked off in 1945 at the end of World War II.
1925: Rockaway land rush
Rockaway Beach in the mid-1920s
Real estate investment in the Rockaways exploded with millions of dollars worth of properties trading hands in the first hot days of August 87 years ago this month. The trades followed reports that New York City was planning on building a new nine-mile boardwalk along the beach.
Thousands of investors and speculators poured into Rockaway Park in Queens, where curb auctions — with buyers and sellers writing deals on pieces of paper — sprung up. Police were brought in to manage the crowds.
Reports said the land rush started after a Harlem theater owner named Joseph Weinstock read an article in May about the city’s boardwalk proposal and began buying property. Within weeks, thousands of others caught on.
Two local real estate firms each reported about $2 million in trades on Saturday, August 1, alone. “Throngs of shouting, gesticulating men surged about in shirt sleeves, hatless, their brows streaming with perspiration,” news reports said.