The man behind the project is lender Michael Goldberg, who got the city to partially lift its stop-work order last week and started cleaning up the site, which became a feces-encrusted rat castle just a year after former owner Michaelangelo Russo, who bought the property for $5.2 million in 2007, ran out of money. In addition to the rats, the building had an illegal construction shed that jutted out so far into the street it held up traffic.

Mr. Goldberg has scrapped plans for condos or a hotel, and has, instead, decreed it shall be a rental. Reportedly, he has already met with the architect and engineer. The building should be completed by the end of the summer.

mcoyne@observer.com

Last December, the Israel-American Chamber of Commerce hosted a half-day seminar, "Commercial Real Estate in the U.S.—Yes, No and How," in Tel Aviv, chaired by investors from Israel and the U.S. Panelists included Jeffrey Goldberg, managing partner of the New York City-based Milestone Group; Eitan Bar Zeev, CEO of Big Centers; Uzi Levy of PBC (the IDB Group); and Gadi Ben Haim, head of real estate activity at Harel Insurance. It is very important to gain insight on the companies who participated as speakers at the seminar in Tel Aviv.

The Milestone Group is a Manhattan-based investment and management company with more than $2.5 billion of multifamily assets under management, representing in excess of 40,000 multifamily units.

Big Centers is a publicly traded company and a large owner of retail centers in Israel. The company owns malls in India and is developing a chain of shopping centers throughout Serbia. Over the past 18 months, it has joined hands with leading U.S. companies, including Kimco, to locate and purchase shopping centers in the U.S. The company has recently purchased ownership interests in 17 shopping centers in the U.S.

The IDB Group is Israel's largest, leading diversified business group, with total assets of more than $30 billion. The publicly traded company is made up of several holding companies, including Property & Buildings Corp., one of Israel's largest real estate corporations. It owns more than 1.1 million square meters of income-producing properties in Israel and approximately 600,000 square meters of hotels and income-producing properties worldwide.

Harel Insurance Company is owned by Harel Insurance Investments and Financial Services, one of Israel's largest public companies, whose shares are traded on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange. Harel Group is the third-largest insurance group in Israel. Harel Insurance has been a very active player securing commercial real estate in the U.S.

In December, Harel Insurance Investment and Finance Services signed an agreement for an investment of $28.5 million, together with SL Green and Jeff Sutton. The joint-venture partnership will develop a building featuring high-end retail space on the lower four floors and 23 floors of dormitories rented to Pace University. SL Green and Mr. Sutton will retain a 51 percent controlling interest in the properties, at 180-182 Broadway and 2 John Street.

In November, Harel acquired two office buildings in Houston, Texas, for $85.2 million.

In October, Harel Insurance and Gaia Real Estate Company announced it had partnered to invest in real estate in the U.S., including the tristate area. It announced the acquisition of several residential units in three separate transactions. The properties include a six-story elevator building with 48 residential units at 5 West 91st Street in Manhattan, constructed in 1974.

The entity also purchased a 20-story, 337,455-square-foot building with 265 residential units and ground-floor commercial space at 320 South Harrison Street in East Orange, N.J. The third property was 92 townhouse units in seven buildings located in Colchester, Conn.

Local investors are also joining forces with Israeli investors to acquire sites as well as distressed debt. Over the past 18 months, New York City-based investor Ziel Feldman, principal of HFZ Capital Group, has acquired distressed debt in Manhattan. Earlier in the year, HFZ and Israeli-based Acro Group won the tender for the $147 million construction loan from Anglo Irish Bank Corporation on the unsold condominiums at the 34-story residential tower conversion at 40 Broad Street. The Wall Street Journal reported that they paid approximately $80 million to acquire 65 percent of the Setai Wall Street, a property that has 159 residential condos.

Acro Group is an Israeli-based private group owned by Arbov Investments Ltd. and Virometal Investments Ltd. Acro specializes in initiating unique real estate projects of residential and business construction in Israel and the United States.

Last year, HFZ and Acro acquired distressed debt, and subsequently the ownership, in two New York properties. The company acquired the construction development at the corner of Second Avenue and East 51st Street where 150 apartments are scheduled to be completed. (This is the site of the crane accident of 2008.) Also, last year, the joint venture acquired the development site on West 40th Street between Fifth and Sixth avenues, across from Bryant Park.

Last month, Israeli developer Moshe Shuster, through his company Victor Homes, acquired a development site on 29th Street in Chelsea between 10th and 11th avenues. Mr. Shuster, no stranger to the New York City condo market, with a successful development a few years ago on 23rd Street between First and Second avenues, paid about $12 million for the site. According to Israeli publication Globes, Mr. Shuster plans to build a 12-story building with 65 condos, which can be increased to 100 after the building rights are increased.
In October 2009, Property & Building, a subsidiary of Nochi Dankner-controlled IDB Holding and its sister company, Koor Industries, purchased the HSBC tower at 452 Fifth Avenue for $330 million. In January, these Israeli investors traveled to Chicago to buy a commercial property for $121.5 million.

Last December, another Israeli publicly traded company, Aviv Arlon Global Ltd., closed on the purchase of a 170,000-square-foot shopping center in the Windy City. The company paid $17.5 million through BAI Century LLC, its joint venture with Bon Investments, through which they own other properties in the U.S.

A number of people have considered Jersey City the sixth borough. It was reported that Israel Phoenix Assurance Ltd. and Menorah Mivtachim Holding Ltd. were in advanced talks to purchase an office building there for $80 million.

In January 2010, Norfolk, Va.-based Harbor Group International purchased the 25-story, 1.1 million-square-foot office building at 4 New York Plaza in Lower Manhattan. In December, Harbor Group and two Israeli insurance companies, Midgdal Insurance and Financial Holdings Ltd. and Menorah Mivtachim Holdings, purchased the 24-story, 415,000-square-foot office building at 1412 Broadway. The joint venture, whose ownership includes Midgal with 33 percent, Menorah with 32 percent and Harbor Group with the rest, paid $150 million for the tower.

In November, Fishman Holdings' real estate unit Darban Investments (traded on the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange) purchased a residential building under construction on Franklin Street in Tribeca for $21 million. When completed, the 18-story building will have a total of 84 apartments. In September, Darban purchased a 12-story building in Manhattan for $44.5 million.

Darban CEO Yigal Lavie was quoted in Globes saying, "Despite the crisis, we see great potential in Manhattan. New York is a city that is keeping its status as one of the great cities of the world. That's why we're focusing on deals at good prices with strong betterment potential. We're examining other deals in New York, and we will continue to do so."

Many people consider Miami a sister city of Manhattan. In February, Optibase Real Estate Miami, a wholly owned subsidiary of an Israeli-based real estate investment firm, paid $8.6 million to purchase 21 luxury condos at the Marquis Residences at 1100 Biscayne Boulevard. The seller was Leviev Boymelgreen Marquis Developers LLC. Earlier this year, another Israeli group, W Capital Group, closed on the purchase of an $8.7 million note, in which the note was secured by 32 residential and eight retail units in Coral Gables, Fla.

The stock market has its highs and lows, yet real estate continues to appreciate in value. With rising values in commercial real estate, expect foreign investors from around the world to continue to seek investment opportunities in the commercial real estate of the U.S. and especially in New York City.

mstoler@madisonrealtycapital.com

Michael Stoler is a managing director at Madison Realty Capital and president of New York Real Estate TV LLC.

Isn't modesty great?

The dedicated bicycle storage room is located on the street level and is available free of charge for Empire State Building tenants with a special access card Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. The release goes on to point out that the plan is in keeping with Mayor Bloomberg's plan-turned-culture-war-battlefield for the city to designate 1,800 miles of bike lanes by 2030.

mcoyne@observer.com

At least that's what Bloomberg reasons, citing declining rents and the flight of financial firms to other parts of the city as the signal that Wall Street, well, isn't quite Wall Street anymore.

"There was a time when it made sense to be on Wall Street because you could meet a lot of other people in finance face to face just by walking a little bit," N.Y.U. financial historian Richard Sylla told Bloomberg. "If there's a nicer place to locate a financial services firm than old downtown New York, you go there."

The average asking rents for the Street at the end of February were $36.51 a square foot, $2 and change cheaper than the rest of downtown, and significantly cheaper than the $44.74 per square foot average in the rest of the city. Taken as its own submarket, Wall Street rents would be cheaper than all others in Manhattan, save four.

In the place of the financiers of old, except Deutsche Bank and Bank of New York Mellon, who still call the Street home, we get non-profits, engineers, architects and media companies—all citing a variety of reasons for their Wall Street addresses, but mostly because it's cheap. Oh, and how could we forget the rise of FiDi? That's right, people: From 1997 to 2008 nine Wall Street buildings have become condos.

The spot Wall Street is losing out to? That would be the Plaza District, home of Icahn Enterprises, CitiGroup, and KKR, which recently saw a bunch of deals inked for over $100 per square foot.

Old Wall Street, can, however, rest assured that while it might not be home to the masters of the universe any more, usurpers will never have quite the same ring to them as Wall Street. Honestly, who the hell would see a movie called "Plaza District?"

mcoyne@observer.com

Broadway and Investcorp bought the building for $1.2 billion in 2007, in one of the most expensive building purchases that heady year. In more recent news, the building is being threatened with 45 percent vacancy after Deutsche Bank left, and the NFL plans to vacate its offices there in less than a year.

According to Reuters, who first reported the story, Broadway and Investcorp financed the purchase with $1.1 billion worth of debt, including a $440 million mortgage. The rest of the debt was divided up into six pieces with SL Green holding onto four pieces and Vornado holding the smallest chunk. In their agreement, Vornado assumed $15 million of SL Green's debt position, which Vornado paid $111 million for.

mcoyne@observer.com

Using their "proprietary predictive model," a.k.a. office vacancy rates for the cities in which the schools are located, the commercial real estate services firm put Ohio State, Richmond, Temple and New York's own St. John's in their Final Four. For those of you who haven't caught March Madness, St. John's got knocked out in the first round and Temple lost to San Diego State in the second.

"I've been filling out a bracket for more than 30 years and I've never won a dime," said Jones Lang LaSalle managing director and former Notre Dame point guard Rich Branning in a release. "This new formula makes sense, though. For the first time in a long time, I'm feeling really good about my picks. Who knew the secret was right under my nose for all these years!"

Branning's alma mater got slapped around last night by Florida State, losing by 14.

There's still hope for the rest of JLL's bracket, though, with No. 12 Richmond facing off against top-seeded Kansas and Ohio State matching up with Kentucky in a No. 1 vs. No. 4 game on Friday.

mcoyne@observer.com

The lender has secured $3 billion in financing to help it pay down it's $7.3 billion in debt obligations, part of which was $3.2 billion due in the first half of this year. Reportedly, iStar was selling off assets to stay liquid. In September, Fitch Ratings downgraded iStar's credit rating to "junk" grades with Fitch citing $2.2 billion worth of debt due at the end of this year.

mcoyne@observer.com

The move makes sense for Morrison & Foerster, since their lease at the Vornado-controlled 1290 Avenue of the Americas is up in 2012. In late 2009, the firm hired CB Richard Ellis to find 200,000 square feet of new space (as reported by The Observer back then).

If the deal goes through—at this point it's only a letter of intent—MoFo will be taking up a considerable chunk of the 843,000-square-foot, 40-story glass tower.

The move was first reported by Lois Weiss in the Post.

mcoyne@observer.com

Winning projects fell into four categories: interiors, architecture, un-built work and urban design.

SLIDESHOW: See the winning projects >>

The Real Deal, who first reported the move, called it "amicable." Westport had been a mezz lender on the hotel, where rooms now average $300 a night and occupancy's at 85 percent.

The 21-story, 145-room hotel made its debut in 2008. By December 2009, lender WestLB made moves to forclose on the $52 million in loans doled out to the developers.

mcoyne@observer.com

Mr. Steinhardt, who made his money as Wall Street's so-called most successful money manager and who now mostly focuses on his philanthropy for Jewish causes, picked up the buildings amidst widespread expectation that the Financial District's fortunes will start looking up after getting wrecked by the economic downturn.

Not that the presence of one of finance's most successful faces means the district will cease being FiDi. Mr. Steinhardt and his partner plan to turn the $17 million Trinity Place property, the ASE's one-time headquarters and complete with the old trading floor, into a retail center with a 174-room boutique hotel above it. The Thames Street property, the more expensive of the two, closing at $48 million, is set to meet a grimmer fate: the plan is to tear the building down and build a 60-story luxury condo tower.

mcoyne@observer.com

In addition to the massive lease at 30 Rock, NBCU has 475,000 square feet in the studio building on 49th Street and 187,000 square feet at 1250 Avenue of the Americas. Plus, since accounting firm Deloitte signing a 436,00-square-foot lease there in January and because NBCU will have first dibs on any condos, any other tenants will have to vacate the building once their leases are up.

Jones Lang Lasalle vice chairman Scott Panzer repped NBCU.

mcoyne@observer.com

The Gotham Gazette seems to think so. The Gazette investigated the city's publicly available property transaction records and found that since 2007, 65 percent of the $701 million invested in Brooklyn went to luxury development and that the CPC, which gets subsidies from the city as well as profits on luxury development, has focused its affordable housing developments in places like East New York, where, according to the Gazette, almost half of adults over 16 years of age have dropped out of the labor force and the median household income hovers around $25,000. Not to mention the crime.

This fact is being obscured because the New Domino, the always contentious former-sugar-factory-come-massive-housing-development on Williamsburg's waterfront being developed by the CPC, is going to have 100 percent of its affordable housing within the development. What's more, to further placate the affordable housing-niks, the CPC signed what essentially amounts to a non-binding promise to keep 30 percent of the properties below market rates, with the minimum at 20 percent. Well, that and the positive PR the CPC enjoys throughout the borough—the Gazette points to several Brooklyn community development corporations and Catholic organizations that stepped up to the plate for the CPC at meetings in August.

This should lead to an even more interesting discussion as current rent regulation, already embroiled in a heated political battle, is set to expire in June.

mcoyne@observer.com

CBRE noted that office rents were expected to grow for the first time in three years nationwide, though only modestly and that growth would be "limited to key markets," before a more rapid recovery in 2012. Rents in New York are expected to inrease by 7 percent, while rents in San Francisco are expected to grow 9 percent.

This comes after last week's news that Rio surpassed midtown as the priciest office market in the Americas and D.C. crossed the line first in pricing recovery. Taken in its totality, this is all pretty good news—the real estate market seems to be picking up a bit more—but we can't help but feel a twinge of jealousy; after all, we damn well expect New York to be at the top of all these lists.

mcoyne@observer.com

An annual report, released by Cushman & Wakefield today, revealed that while South America, and Brazil in general, has skyrocketing office occupancy costs (rent, insurance, et al), the U.S. saw a 2 percent decline. All in all, Rio had a 47 percent increase in costs, the most out of a South American office market that saw increases almost across the board.

"The rise of rents in Rio de Janeiro's office market results from very high demand and a lack of supply in the city," Mariana Mokayad, Cushman & Wakefield South America's research manager, said in the release. "The quality of the new stock being delivered is speeding up rental growth."

Hong Kong's central business district was the world's most expensive office market, with London's West End coming in at second. New York's midtown stays strong at No. 5, with average occupancy costs of $115 per square foot annually (but Rio was No. 4, at $120).

Top 10 below.

Rank 2010	Rank 2011	City, Location	Country	Occupancy Cost $/sq.ft/year
3	1	Hong Kong CBD	China	241
2	2	London West End	UK	233
1	3	Tokyo CBD	Japan	166
13	4	Rio de Janeiro CBD	Brazil	120
6	5	New York Midtown	USA	115
5	6	Mumbai CBD	India	114
7	7	Moscow CBD	Russia	108
8	8	Paris CBD	France	104
10	9	Zurich CBD	Switzerland	98
9	10	Milan CBD	Italy	91

mcoyne@observer.com