Sunday Summary: Goodbye, Gotham? (Let’s Hope Not)

Mets fans have spent the last three weeks in a state of shock and despair as we’ve watched the second-highest payroll in baseball digress into the single worst record in the majors as of Friday.

It has led some of us to reconsider past loyalties. Why stick with a team when it gives you nothing but grief? Heck, there are plenty of teams to root for in L.A., or Atlanta, or Florida. We heard the Yankees are also not doing terribly. [Editor’s note: Indeed, the Yankees as of Friday had won 10 out of their last 12.]

In that spirit, we have to wonder if Citadel’s Ken Griffin is a Mets fan, because he is looking a lot more favorably on South Florida.

Granted, Miami was always part of Griffin’s development plans, with a 1.7 million-square-foot mixed-use tower in the works with Related Companies at 1201 Brickell, but last week we learned that Griffin was ditching the hotel part of the project and going for a pure office play in the Magic City.

Coincidentally this comes not even two weeks after New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani singled out Griffin as one of the billionaires who should be thoroughly soaked in a pied-a-terre tax thanks to the $238 million penthouse he owns at 220 Central Park South.

“It is shameful that [Mamdani] used Ken’s name as the example of those who supposedly aren’t carrying their fair share of the burdens associated with New York City’s often costly and wasteful spending,” Gerald Beeson, Citadel’s chief operating officer, wrote in an interoffice memo that the Wall Street Journal got hold of.

Beeson’s indignation is warranted given that Griffin is not just parking money in a flashy apartment. Citadel is in the midst of a 62-story, 1.9 million-square-foot office project at 350 Park Avenue with Rudin and Vornado Realty Trust that would presumably bring thousands of jobs to the city.

“The project — if we move forward — will entail more than $6 billion of spending,” Beeson wrote in his memo.

Wait a second… If they move forward?!

We feel like Luke Weaver did Thursday after blowing a 4-3 lead in the eighth inning against the Nationals.

And, while no final decisions have been made in the case of Griffin as far as we know, it’s not as though a lot of companies haven’t been flirting for a long time with markets like, say, Dallas — and that city’s office market certainly shows it. (Not to mention a population that has grown from 7.6 million people in 2020 to 8.3 million as of 2024.)

Some cities, like Detroit, are making a concerted effort to lure in new people and new companies, and (shocking!) the business community works in tandem with city hall. (Go figure!)

Plus, there are excellent real estate projects outside of the five boroughs for those who have the gumption. Daniel English and Jay Rappaport, for example, have created the real estate platform Legacy Investing, which is turning obsolete office space throughout the Midwest into something pretty darn useful: data centers.

We just ask one thing, Mayor Mamdani: Please don’t mention Dario Amodei of Anthropic anytime soon. That company is in negotiations to take 465,630 square feet of office at 330 Hudson Street, and we’d like that one to go through.

Miami nice

Griffin is certainly not the only one who made South Florida moves last week.

Blackstone affiliate Link Logistics bought eight — count ’em! — buildings consisting of 798,716 square feet of industrial space in Boynton Beach for $195.9 million from Prologis.

The wheeling and dealing has also been happening on the residential side with Fortune International Group and Château Group scoring $113.75 million in construction financing for their 320-unit St. Regis Residences Sunny Isles Beach.

Likewise, PMG and LNDMRK Development coaxed a $126 million construction loan out of Madison Realty Capital and Siguler Guff for the 233-unit Twenty Sixth & 2nd Wynwood Residences.

Omega Real Estate Management got a $130 million cash-out Department of Housing and Urban Development 223(f) loan for the Gardens Residences in North Miami.

But the big mamou of the week was Bruce Eichner’s Continuum Company nailing a $344 million construction debt package from S3 Capital for its massive planned waterfront development in North Bay Village.

However, if you really want to have a deep dive into Miami residential, we suggest you take a look at our interview with Erik Rutter and David Weitz of Oak Row Equities, who are two of the most ambitious kids on the block and have already been setting records in South Florida.

As for the New York believers….

Of course, Anthropic is not the only company that made big bets on New York last week.

Vornado Realty Trust, for instance, doubled down on Park Avenue Plaza, having bought out Zhang Xin’s 49 percent stake in the property.

MAG Partners and Global Holdings trumpeted a joint venture to develop a new residential tower on church-owned land at 122 Varick Street in Hudson Square.

And there were a number of spectacular leases in excess of 90,000 square feet, like AI firm Sierra taking 94,145 square feet at Rockrose Development’s 11 East 26th Street; Jump Trading taking 99,305 square feet at Related Companies’ 50 Hudson Yards; health care tech platform Tennr taking 124,733 square feet at Hudson Square Properties’ 345 Hudson Street; and Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton bagging some 475,000 square feet at Brookfield Properties’ One Liberty Plaza.

Oh, and while it didn’t crack 90,000, footwear and fashion company Steve Madden signed a 13-year, 60,003-square-foot office lease at Empire State Realty Trust’s 501 Seventh Avenue — we learned that from ESRT’s earnings report.

Grades are in

Yes, they’re coming in fast and furious: Earnings reports as far as the eye can see!

For the most part they were pretty good, but to give you the gist: $21.8 billion of net long-term inflows in Invesco’s report; less than stellar performance in Alexandria Real Estate Equities’ report; a healthy Q1 for AvalonBay and a good one for Vici Properties; analyst expectations exceeded for Blackstone Mortgage Trust (but not nearly as good as Blackstone’s 25 percent year-over-year increase in distributable earnings from the week before) and for Newmark with a 27.2 percent year-over-year growth; record leasing and revenue for Equinix; double-digit growth for JLL; and 1.1 million square feet of leasing for BXP.

See you next week — hopefully with some sort of Mets shakeup.