The oldest living Pritzker Prize winner turns 96 today.
Chinese-American architect I.M. Pei will celebrate his 96th birthday with a “small, intimate affair,” his family relayed to The Commercial Observer.
During his six-decade career, Mr. Pei created iconic structures across the world, including the Four Seasons Hotel in New York City and the pyramid entrance Read More
The Kaufman Organization’s building at 519 Eighth Avenue is now 100-percent occupied after Legacy Builders inked an 11-year lease for 9,020 square feet at the property, Barbara Raskob, leasing director at Kaufman, told The Commercial Observer. Asking rents were $34 per square foot.
The tenant, a contractor, will renovate the space to include offices and conference rooms, according to Ms. Raskob. “They needed more space than what they had,” she said. “They wanted the ability to build their own space, since it will serve as a sort of showroom for them.”
The building at 519 Eighth Avenue totals 355,000 square feet over 26 floors and was completed in 1927. The typical floor size is 16,000 square feet, according to the Kaufman Organization. Read More
Columbia University has hired a team from Winick Realty Group to market 1,690 square feet of retail space at 2884 Broadway, The Commercial Observer has learned.
Winick Executive Vice President Kenneth Hochhauser, Director Michael Gleicher and associate David Lawford will represent the Ivy League University as it seeks a retail tenant to replace Card-O-Matic, a stationery and novelty shop. The lot, with 1,240 square feet of ground floor and 450 square feet of basement space, is on Broadway between 112th and 113th Streets, near the campus’s main entrance gate.
It’s also two doors down from Tom’s Restaurant, the greasy spoon made famous when Seinfeld used its wraparound neon sign in exterior shots. Read More
Marcus & Millichap has arranged the $8.9 million sale of a six-story, 42-unit elevator building at 1090 St. Nicholas Avenue in Washington Heights, positioned in a pocket of the neighborhood anchored by a number of medical institutions.
The buyer, an undisclosed local investment firm, will continue to run the residential, mostly rent stabilized apartments and retains the Metropolitan Center for Mental Health as a tenant in the basement-level commercial space. Read More
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Though it still makes up just two percent of the Manhattan office market’s total inventory, a number of significant deals have caused a surge in the education sector’s Manhattan footprint.
A report from CBRE attributes the 47 percent jump in office space leased by the sector – between 2005 and November 2012 – to a growing residential population, increases in enrollment at universities, campus expansions, greater availability and lower asking rents in sections of Midtown South and Downtown. Read More
Newark, N.J.-based Treetop Development has closed on two West Harlem walk-up properties for $8.8 million.
The 5-story buildings at 220-226 West 116th Street and 449 West 125th Street, which make up a total of 52 two- and three-bedroom apartments and seven retail stores, are part of a continued push by the company to acquire properties in under-served Manhattan neighborhoods.
In the area north of 96th Street and up to 135th Street on the west side, rents are still relatively affordable, new projects and retail hubs are sprouting, and there’s access to transportation and universities, said Adam Mermelstein, Treetop’s managing founder along with Azi Mandel. Read More
Ariel Property Advisors has brokered the sale of five Upper Manhattan properties totaling $5.85 million. The properties include a four-story parking garage in Morningside Heights and a series of vacant lots in East Harlem.
The vacant lots, located at 1840, 1846, 1854-1856 Park Avenue and 61 East 126th Street, sold for $1.35 million in an all-cash transaction, according to Victor Sozio, a broker at Ariel. Mr. Sozio represented both the seller and the buyer, along with colleagues Shimon Shkury and Michael Tortorici. Read More
Jay Neveloff is a partner at Kramer Levin Naftalis & Frankel whose practice is focused on real estate and other commercial transactions. His past and present client list includes Starwood Hotels, the owners of Starrett City, New York Life Insurance Co. and the Trump Organization. Mr. Neveloff spoke to The Commercial Observer last week about how land-use issues have evolved in the city over the past 10 years. Read More
The New York Genome Center has signed a 20-year, 170,000-square-foot lease at Edward Minskoff’s 101 Avenue of the Americas to establish the largest genetic sequencing facility in the city.
Mayor Bloomberg, who was on hand at a press conference held at the Hudson Square building this morning to announce the deal, said the lease was evidence of how biotech and life sciences companies were moving to the city and helping to diversify the local economy. Read More
Apparently when it came time to triple up on the T-squares, architecture firm Goldstein Hill & West decided it was time to commit to its own office in Lower Manhattan.
The firm, which specializes in high-rise residential and hospitality buildings and counts Columbia University and Forest City Ratner Company among its roster of clients, signed a 10-year lease to take 8,500 square feet at 11 Broadway. The firm will be moving out of 4,000 square foot space it had subleased from GACE Consulting Engineers at 31 West 27th Street, Crain’s New York reported last week. Read More
Two tenants have signed leases at 5 Columbus Circle totaling 17,000 square feet of space.
One of the deals, a 5,500 square foot transaction with 1Life Healthcare on the building’s 17th floor, was done for rents around $70 per square foot, among the highest the building has ever netted, even during the real estate boom before the recession.
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Columbia’s prez, Lee Bollinger, almost breaks a sweat when he talks about the school’s plans to move ahead with expansion plans, reports Crain’s. “A note of impatience frequently creeps into the voice” of the ever-polished Mr. Bollinger when he talks about Manhattanville, says the article.
Apparently the former law prof found himself nonetheless Read More
For Nick Sprayregen, the owner of a set of West Harlem warehouses in the footprint of a 17-acre expansion planned by Columbia University, there was a brief glimmer of hope earlier this year. The landlord, to the surprise of most everyone watching, won a state appellate court case that challenged the state’s use of eminent Read More
Columbia University’s proposed 17-acre expansion is set for a test June 1, when the state’s top court is scheduled to hear arguments on the use of eminent domain, a power that was ruled unconstitutional by a state appellate court in December in a humiliating blow for the Ivy League school and the state. (The Read More
State Senator Bill Perkins is apparently not happy about the state’s choice of consultants.
One consultant, specifically: AKRF, the New York–based firm that has established itself as the unchallenged king of environmental review in the city and state, dominating the field of government contracts.
The source of angst for Mr. Perkins is Read More
