“It was a destructive and incredibly foolish decision on multiple levels,” writes New York Times columnist and eminent economist Paul Krugman in today’s paper. He was referring to Governor Chris Christie’s decision to put the kibosh on ARC, a tunnel that would burrow under the Hudson River, dramatically increasing train capacity between New York Read More
It’s been a while since we’ve read a good Dubai real estate disaster update.
This morning’s comes care of India’s NDTV. In a nutshell, vacancy rates are still rising, skyscrapers still remain incomplete, and purchasers of units in those incomplete towers are still unable to get their money back.
Here’s a snippet:
Apartment buyers who Read More
Did you know that Vans has only eight employees in New York? And that’s an improvement over the one employee the shoemaker had in New York three years ago?
Well, Vans, the popular West Coast purveyor of checkered canvas slip-ons is trying to change all that. The Wall Street Journal reports that the firm is Read More
Remember Remember the 15th of September
Whoever coined the phrase “what goes around comes around” clearly didn’t know anything about commercial real estate.
In yet another example of life’s little injustices, two former Deutsche Bank executives who made fortunes lubricating the real estate juggernaut have just landed plum gigs at LNR Property.
The Journal‘s Lingling Wei reports:
Justin Kennedy, ex-head Read More
Julie Macklowe, fashion maven, hedge fund manager, and wife of real estate macher Billy Macklowe, is finally following her passion.
Trade mag Hedge Fund Alert reports that Ms. Macklowe (profiled by Irina Aleksander in the Observer last year) is ditching the hedge fund business for fashion: “Specifically, she plans to start a fashion-related Read More
Capital New York’s got a solid piece on the likelihood that Governor Chris Christie will shelve plans to build a new train tunnel under the Hudson River, a project known as ARC (it stands for “Access to the Region’s Core”).
The project would do the following:
Named “Access to the Region’s Core,” or A.R.C., Read More
Remember Remember the 15th of September
The Journal examines the state of the national office market in today’s newspaper. The prognosis: tepid. Asking rents are, in some places, stabilizing (not rising, just stabilizing). Investors like Mort Zuckerman are once again investing. And while the national vacancy rate is still rising, it’s doing so more slowly.
Which is to say, commercial real Read More
William Macklowe rubbed the bridge of his nose and said he was suffering from a sinus headache. It was the first sign of human frailty he’d allowed during the interview, and the interview was almost over.
The nose where he pressed his fingers was aquiline, like the beak of a barn owl. Below, his thin Read More
Forbes just came out with its 400 richest people list, and guess who isn’t on it? Even so, Manhattan developer Tamir Sapir–presumably because his demise has proven so intriguing–still merits an article. And Forbes digs up some dirt.
First, the magazine estimates the developer’s worth at about $700 million, “still wealthy indeed but not nearly Read More
We talked to Sam Zell, the grave dancer himself, this afternoon. It was short and sweet, and mostly about a profile The Observer‘s working on. But, Mr. Zell, whose Equity Residential recently bought three apartment buildings in Manhattan, did have this to say about the New York real estate market:
“I think Read More
David and Jed Walentas, the father-and-son real estate moguls whose Two Trees Management got its start decades ago in Soho, before abandoning it to craft Brooklyn’s Dumbo neighborhood almost wholecloth, are buying a Manhattan office building, the only one in their portfolio.
The family is in contract to buy the 340,000-square-foot 50 West 23rd Street, Read More
Mark Hay has an illuminating interview on Capital New York this morning with former Pakistani ambassador to the U.K. Akbar Ahmed.
The main thrust: The often ugly controversy surrounding the plans by Imam Faisal Abdul Rauf and developer Sharif El-Gamal (whom I profiled in this week’s Observer) to build an Islamic community center two blocks from Ground Read More
Park51 developer Sharif El-Gamal, accidental protagonist of the most politicized real estate story in recent memory, sat behind the blond-wood desk in his office six floors above the lower Broadway mall, and, meaty hands clasped before him, held forth on what it takes to make it in real estate. After all, it is Read More
On the heels of developer Ron Moelis’ grim pronouncements about real estate finance to The Times, Grant Thorton has issued a white paper forecasting a commercial real estate recovery in 2011 “at the earliest.”
“[Commercial real estate] industry fundamentals remain weak,” reads the report. In part, that’s because the real estate industry generally lags Read More
The state lottery has officially recommended that the state award the Malaysia-based Genting Group the rights to redevelop the Queens Aqueduct, a struggling horse-racing track, into a gaming and horse-racing destination.
This comes as no surprise. The other two bidders—Penn National Gaming, and a consortium of SL Green, Hard Rock and Clairvest—were disqualified in Read More
