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The Lab

The Lab

George Comfort & Sons' Worldwide Plaza, shining bright.

The Nomura Move’s Real Impact on Downtown

Japanese bank Nomura’s decision to move out of the World Financial Center downtown and take 900,000 square feet at Worldwide Plaza in midtown is undoubtedly a blow for the tip of the island’s commercial future. The move will leave a huge vacancy at the Brookfield Properties-owned complex just as 3 million square feet of leases there are ending in 2013. (We saw the move coming in mid-May.)

But it’s more than just the vacancy. Read More

The Lab

Boomism Immortal

On Feb. 8, the city’s biggest building-sales brokerage, Massey Knakal, blasted a press release announcing the sale of a narrow, four-story, red-brick building along First Avenue, a block southwest of Stuyvesant Town. The walk-up rested snugly between a larger building cloaked in mesh and fronted by scaffolding and a similar-sized, white building. A chicken joint Read More

The Lab

Is the Rent Too Damn High?

I was out of the country when Jimmy McMillan of the Rent Is Too Damn High Party put on his gubernatorial debate performance, and have only just now gotten around to subscribing to his newsletter. As best I can tell, Mr. McMillan’s platform is that New York City rents are too damn high and that’s Read More