From brokerage drama to feuds with unions, no topic was off-limits at The Real Deal’s 11th annual New York Showcase and Forum on May 14.
TRD caught up with a few of our panelists throughout the day to ask them for a last word on the debt markets and development.
Gary LaBarbera, president of the Building and Construction Trades Council of Greater New York put it this way, about the union’ standoff with Related Companies. “We’re prepared to sit down and have a conversion.”
“Absent that,” LaBarbera said, “we’ll continue to stand up and advocate for what we believe is the right thing to do here.”
Along with union chief, TRD interviewed Alchemy Properties’ Ken Horn, Brown Harris Stevens’ Hall Willkie, Halstead Property’s Diane Ramirez, Warburg Realty’s Clelia Peters, Newmark Knight Frank’s Dustin Stolly and JLL’s Peter Rigaurdi.
Horn said his conversion of the Woolworth tower into condos — where a penthouse will reportedly ask $110 million — has been his firm’s most challenging development project to date. “We have known from Day 1 that for people to buy at Woolworth, the building would have to be more complete,” he said. “The velocity of people coming into the building now is extraordinary because you have vertical transportation — you have elevators in now!”
Meanwhile, Stolly said there is more capital flowing into the debt market since 2006. “It has to do, primarily, with competition,” he said. “There’s not enough deal flow to feed the financing machine.”