Staten Island’s proposed Empire Outlets development project – and an accompanying 600-foot, $300 million ferris wheel – entered into the city’s six-month Universal Land Use Review Procedure yesterday.
If the zoning changes and special permits required for the construction of the development (and the giant wheel) are granted upon completion of the review, Brooklyn-based developer Read More
Massey Knakal has arranged the $13 million sale of a development site at 16-18 East 30th Street in the NoMad District, where its new owners hope to cash in on the transformation of the neighborhood with the construction of a high-end boutique hotel.
Just a few years ago the NoMad District was more like a no-man’s land, made up of gritty wholesalers, hair salons and counterfeiters, but the soaring success of the Ace and NoMad hotels brought legitimacy to the area, as construction lending opens up and increases interest from developers.
“This sale is just a reflection of how robust and frothy the development market is,” Massey Knakal’s Thomas Gammino, who along with John Ciraulo represented the seller of the site, LHG Group LLC and Palladium Management, told The Commercial Observer. “This is an ideal location for a hotel due to the renaissance of the area.” Read More
The now infamous David Bistricer/Joe Chetrit development tag team has struck an agreement with the city to create a three-acre park at the mouth of Newtown Creek in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, Crain’s reported.
The agreement was crucial for Mr. Chetrit and Mr. Bistricer to move forward with their plans to erect a two-tower residential development along the East River waterfront at 77 Commercial Street, which they purchased last year for $25 million. Read More
The Department of Housing Preservation and Development released a Request for Proposals yesterday seeking developers for the second phase of Hunter’s Point South in booming Long Island City.
Parcel C, as it is described in the RFP, will consist of 1,000 units of housing for families earning between $60,000 and $140,000 per year. Read More
With a number of projects in the pipeline, Bruce Eichner is planning a dramatic comeback to New York real estate with an 80/20 residential project at the Harlem Park site he agreed to acquire last week.
Mr. Eichner is in the midst of an architectural competition for the planned development at 1800 Park Avenue and 125th Street, The Commercial Observer has learned.
“He is going to do something creative with the building,” Geoffrey Newman, senior managing director at Newmark Grubb Knight Frank, said of the project. “For a rental perspective, I think it’s going to be a spectacular building.” Read More
The dark glass walls lining 51 Astor Place are modernistic, if not futuristic. Some critics have claimed that its developer’s asking rents, at upward of $115 a foot, are from the future too.
Others have argued that Edward Minskoff took a gamble in erecting the structure without an anchor tenant—a so-called “spec tower.”
But for Mr. Minskoff, who has developed close to 37 million square feet of property in 10 cities around the country—maintaining patience as a virtue—the term takes on a positive connotation.
“A spec tower means that we started the development with the confidence that if you build it they will come, and with the confidence necessary to lease the building,” Mr. Minskoff told The Commercial Observer. “If you’re going to plan a building and you don’t start it until a tenant comes walking along, you can be sitting on the dirt for 10 years.” Read More
The New York City Department of Sanitation has initiated what amounts to a land-swap with the City University of New York and the Memorial-Sloan Kettering Cancer Center that will allow for the development of a new outpatient cancer center and a consolidated location for CUNY Hunter College’s health and basic sciences campuses.
Mark Weiss, Justin DiMare and Howard Kesseler from Newmark Grubb Knight Frank represented MSKCC in its $215 million purchase of the 66,000-square-foot parcel of land at 525 East 73rd Street that will be the site for the development. The spot was previously the home of a New York City Department of Sanitation garage facility, which was demolished in 2008 to allow for the construction of a new facility. That project never got off the ground and in 2011 the New York City Economic Development Corporation issued a Request for Proposals for its sale and development. Read More
As the first month of 2012 was coming to a close, many in the industry wondered aloud whether this would be a moribund year for leasing in many of the city’s newest buildings. There were notable new developments –1 and 4 World Trade Center and 51 Astor Place among them– dealing with equally-as-notable vacancies.
The NY Post’s Steve Cuozzo in January wrote that he detected “nothing substantive, or close to it, happening at no fewer than a half-dozen-odd new projects, from the World Trade Center to West 55th Street.”
Since then, however, the market has picked up, and many of these new developments have notched significant deals that have kept the naysayers mum…. at least, temporarily so. Read More
