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Year in Real Estate

By Al Barbarino 8:00am

Year in Real Estate

New York And New Jersey Continue To Deal With Aftermath Of Hurricane Sandy

Fast & Furious: The minute-by-minute, behind-the-scenes negotiations that led to this year’s F.E.M.A transaction

The whirlwind negotiations between the Federal Emergency Management Agency and Muss Development to create an impromptu relief outpost in Queens in the days following Hurricane Sandy’s descent on New York would not have happened had it not been for one of the real estate industry’s leading dynasties.

In a deal that would later come to symbolize the overall dedication of the city’s real estate titans, government officials and executives banged out terms for 200,000 square feet of temporary space at the Forest Hills Tower in a mere five days, a minor miracle in the world of office leasing. Read More

By Al Barbarino 7:45am

Year in Real Estate

East Coast Begins To Clean Up And Assess Damage From Hurricane Sandy

Above and Beyond Hurricane Sandy

FEMA spokesperson William Rukeyser described the ad-hoc, jumbled feel of the company’s impromptu space in the Forest Hills Tower like a scene from a hard-hit neighborhood, with hanging wires, antennas strapped to the ceiling, Post-It notes and sheets of paper with various instructions scattered about, and impromptu folding tables holding printers and other office equipment. Most seemed at a loss for words when assessing damages.

“It’s—It’s—It’s just a mess,” Durst Organization spokesperson Jordan Barowitz told The Commercial Observer less than a week after the storm hit, struggling to describe the destruction in Lower Manhattan. Read More

By Al Barbarino 7:30am

Year in Real Estate

New York City Exteriors And Landmarks

In 2012, Hospitals Expand Real Estate Footprints, from Brooklyn to Harlem

The city’s aging population, a drive for state-of-the-art facilities and strong hiring across the health care industry prompted unprecedented growth in leasing activity in the health care sector across the five boroughs in 2012.

Memorial Sloan-Kettering, Mt. Sinai, Montefiore Hospital and Inventa Health were among the dozens of hospitals and medical companies to announce bold new initiatives to expand their footprints in the city in 2012, and those developments are only a sign of what’s to come, brokers and analysts predict. Read More

By Al Barbarino 7:15am

Year in Real Estate

kingsPlaza

A King-Sized Deal In Brooklyn Marked the Biggest Investment Sale of the Year

Brooklyn malls don’t usually come to mind as the city’s highest-grossing commercial real estate. But this year was different, with 5100 Kings Plaza, a k a the Kings Plaza Mall, taking the top spot among citywide sales when it sold for $751 million earlier this month.

It wasn’t just the biggest sale of the year—it was the biggest outright, single-trade sale in Brooklyn ever, according to data provided by Massey Knakal Realty Services. 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