By Billy Gray 5/14 12:54pm

Food & Drink

quest

Jay-Z, Questlove Expand Restaurant Holdings With Dueling Chicken Joints

Two of New York’s preeminent hip-hop artists are making moves in the city’s casual restaurant scene this week.

Buffalo Boss, the organic and hormone-free wing shack that counts Jay-Z as an investor, signed a 10-year, 600-square-foot lease at, fittingly, 400 Jay Street in Downtown Brooklyn. And Questlove of The Roots and Late Night with Jimmy’s Fallon‘s house band, has partnered with blockbuster restaurateur Stephen Starr (Buddakan, Morimoto, and a slew of restaurants in his–and Questlove’s–native Philly) on Hybird, a drumstick, dumpling and cupcake purveyor that opens this Saturday at 75 Ninth Avenue in the Chelsea Market. Read More

By Al Barbarino 4/15 2:05pm

The Lobby

Silverstein

Larry Silverstein is Latest High-Profile CEO to Step Down

Larry Silverstein, the affable face of Silverstein Properties and the man behind the redevelopment of the World Trade Center, is stepping down as CEO – the latest of a string of high-profile real estate CEOs to step down this year.

The co-chief executive at the firm, Mr. Silvertein’s heir apparent, Marty Burger, who joined in 2010 as executive vice president after 15 years with Related Companies, will succeed Mr. Silverstein, The Wall Street Journal reported.  Mr. Silverstein will stay on as chairman.

“Marty is a terrific young guy, and his function is really going to be to grow the company,” the 81-year-old real estate icon, Mr. Silverstein, told the Journal. Read More

By Jotham Sederstrom 2/07 10:00am

Postings

CO Page 20 - Postings

Bruce Ratner’s Game of Life

Last week, news that Bruce Ratner would be stepping down as chief executive officer of Forest City Ratner rippled through the real estate industry, even as others in New York wondered aloud what it would mean for the company’s
yet-to-be-completed Atlantic Yards project.

After the jump, a brief and incomplete timeline of Mr. Ratner’s career and life. Read More

By Billy Gray 1/24 7:00am

Power Broker

Photo: Peter Lettre/NY Observer

The Postgraduate: Newmark Grubb Knight Frank’s Brian Waterman

Brian Waterman’s 27 years at Newmark Grubb Knight Frank sprang from a 90-second interview with NGKF Chief Executive Officer Barry Gosin in 1986.

Mr. Waterman, now a vice chairman at NGKF, was fresh out of college and considering a career in law. His mentor, Saul Katz, Sterling Equities’ co-founder and president, shot from the hip and said there were already enough lawyers in the world, and that Mr. Waterman should look into real estate, the field that had minted Mr. Katz’s fortune.

Mr. Katz put Messrs. Waterman and Gosin in touch.

Not quite two minutes into the job interview, Mr. Gosin told Mr. Waterman he was hired, and to immediately start canvassing. “It was my first and only job interview,” Mr. Waterman said. Read More

By Billy Gray 12/18/12 8:00am

Toronto Raptors v Brooklyn Nets

Barclays Center: From Eminent Domain to Deron Williams

“It was intended to be iconic,” MaryAnne Gilmartin said of the Barclays Center’s façade of undulating rusted steel just three months after the wildly controversial arena opened its doors.

But while the arena’s architecture aimed to lodge itself in the public consciousness, the Atlantic Yards development project, of which Barclays is the preening firstborn child, couldn’t have anticipated the discord it would ignite in the Brooklyn neighborhoods it promised to reactivate. Read More

By Billy Gray 12/18/12 7:00am

Year in Real Estate

CP 12-18 Year in Leasing, Page 20

The Year in Real Estate: From GSA to Hurricane Sandy, A Look Back at 2012

Just when New York’s traditional geographic dividing lines were beginning to seem quaint, Hurricane Sandy made landfall and brought them back to light.

Downtown, which over the years had become harder and harder to distinguish from uptown, was plunged into darkness, sending the relatively young and vaguely creative well above 14th Street nosebleed territory in search of power. Only the Brooklyn side of the Williamsburg Bridge stayed illuminated, a stark metaphor for the borough’s slow transformation into a contender.

But in commercial real estate, boundaries continued to disappear. In January, Condé Nast expanded its 1.05-million-square-foot lease at 1 World Trade Center by 138,773 square feet, helping lower Manhattan shed its stodgy finance-centric reputation and prompting slight panic among the owners of Midtown media canteens like Michael’s. Read More

By Daniel Edward Rosen 10/04/12 5:32pm

The Sit-Down

Screen Shot 2012-10-05 at 8.38.46 AM

Larry Silverstein’s Got 99 Problems, But Jay-Z Ain’t One

Hip hop impresario Jay-Z kicked off the opening of Forest City Ratner’s Barclays Center with a series of eight sold-out concerts last week. And while thousands of rap and pop music fans descended on Brooklyn to welcome Hova back to his native borough, more surprising, perhaps, were the boldface real estate titans who lined up as guests of Bruce Ratner to witness the spectacle. Besides Dan Tishman of Tishman Construction and Vornado Realty Trust’s Michael Fascitelli and Steven Roth, Mary Ann Tighe of CBRE described the evening as electric. “The only Jay-Z song I recognized is his New York song, which he performed early in the show,” wrote Ms. Tighe, who added in an email to The Commercial Observer that she also enjoyed the arena’s menu of Brooklyn-based restaurants. “Best arena/stadium food ever,” she wrote.

Perhaps the one attendee who was most impressed with the Barclays Center and its booming sound system, however, was Larry Silverstein, the iconic developer behind the ongoing redevelopment of the World Trade Center. Mr. Silverstein revealed his first impressions of the Barclays Center with The Commercial Observer and shared his opinions on Jay-Z and the venue’s body-shaking bass system.

The Commercial Observer: So a tipster told us they saw you at the Jay-Z show last Friday.
Mr. Silverstein: We attended the concert Friday night, and it was a transformational experience. Read More

By Daniel Edward Rosen 6/13/12 6:01pm

Jay Z

JayZNet

Jay Z Is the Director of Barclay’s Center

Basketball owner and rap mogul Jay-Z can claim another title to his rap-and-business resume: Director of a basketball arena.

Jay-Z, a.k.a “Shawn Carter,” is listed under his real name as the director for the Brooklyn Arena LLC, the company behind Barclay’s Center, as was first reported by Norman Oder’s Atlantic Yards Report blog. 

The hip hopper’s new title was discovered on liquor license application papers filed by Forest City Ratner Cos. Read More

By Azi Paybarah 3/09/10 6:05pm

Source: Flake, Jay-Z Out of AEG

Rev. Floyd Flake and rapper Jay-Z are pulling out today from AEG, the company which bid recently won a lucrative contract to run video lottery terminals at Aqueduct, according to a source familiar with the group’s make-up.

Flake, a powerful reverend and former congressman, and Jay-Z, a multi-faceted rapper, each had less Read More

By Emily Geminder 11/03/09 4:31am

Clothier, and So Much More, Rocawear Takes Floor-Plus at 1411 Broadway

When not producing chart-topping records, putting a ring on multiplatinum divas or investing in basketball teams, Jay-Z is at work on his other dynasty: fashion. Rocawear, the clothing label created by the rapper also known as Shawn Carter, inked a 40,000-square-foot deal at 1411 Broadway. The apparel company will hold down the entire 38th floor Read More