By Al Barbarino 12/05/12 10:22am

Sales Beat

249 West 17th Street -- the former Siegel-Cooper warehouse

Savanna Pays $75.8M for Adjacent Chelsea Loft Buildings

New York-based real estate private equity and asset management firm Savanna has closed on its acquisition of two adjacent loft-style office buildings at 245 West 17th Street and 249 West 17th Street in Chelsea for $75.8 million, city records show.

Originally a dry goods warehouse and wagon house for the Siegel-Cooper Company department store, the property at 249 West 17th Street is a 145,000-square-foot, six-story building.  The other property, equal in square footage, is 12 stories high.

The two properties have a combined 40,000 square feet of office space and are located within a couple blocks of Chelsea Market, the Meatpacking District and Google’s 111 Eighth Avenue. Read More

By Daniel Geiger 1/24/12 11:08am

Postings

1173 REBNY 116th Annual Banquet, 1.19.12

Walking the REBNY Ballroom: Hungry Brokers, Angry Lapidus

Speeches were casually ignored, drinks were spilled and bonds were formed at last Thursday’s 116th annual Real Estate Board of New York Gala, which this year drew an estimated 2,000 brokers, owners, advertising buyers and real estate reporters to the New York Hilton for an evening of conviviality, honorifics and hushed deal making. Among the fray was Commercial Observer staff writer Daniel Geiger, who during the course of the evening saw his stenopad tossed by an irate real estate broker and who unabashedly accosted Studley’s Woody Heller in the hotel’s bathroom, all for the sake of the story. Below, a timeline of gala comings and goings, from the innocuous gossip down to the downright obnoxious.  Read More

By Laura Kusisto 1/24/11 8:49pm

Prospective Tenants

The Starbucks of Cupcakes

You can already follow the trail of Crumbs from the tip of the island almost to the top of Central Park. But the cupcake maker could eventually become one of the city’s most ubiquitous food chains.

“How many locations does Starbucks have?” Newmark Knight Frank’s Jeff Roseman, who represents the tenant, asked The Commercial Observer Read More