SL Green Realty Corp. announced that the City of New York has renewed its lease covering 372,520 s/f for offices of the law division at 100 Church Street, the 21-story, 1.05 million square foot building in downtown Manhattan.
The 20-year lease renewal commences November, 2013 covering floors 2-6, 20 and a portion of the building’s concourse level. The City’s lease at 100 Church Street was scheduled to expire in October, 2013.
The company also announced that is has refinanced the property with a new $230 million, 10-year loan bearing interest at …

RKF announced a long-term lease with Mackenzie-Childs for 7,700 s/f of retail space lease at Solow Realty & Development Company’s 20 West 57th St., on the south block between Fifth and Sixth Avenues in the Plaza District.
The American-made luxury home furnishings, tableware and gift company will relocate from its existing location at 14 West 57th St. and plans to open at its new location by the fourth quarter of 2012. RKF chairman and CEO Robert Futterman and senior director Brandon Eisenman arranged the lease on behalf of the landlord, …

By Steven Spinola, president,
Real Estate Board of New York

Since assuming office in 2010, Manhattan District Attorney Cyrus R. Vance, Jr. has made the investigation of corruption in the interior construction industry a priority. His investigations will help to better protect Real Estate Board of New York members while also saving millions of dollars for building owners and corporate tenants.

Also, the Loft and Secondary Committee is now the Midtown South Committee, and REBNY’s Spring Golf & Tennis Outing has been rescheduled for Thursday, June 28.

Industry leader David Winoker died in a skydiving accident last Friday at the age of 49.

Known for repositioning office buildings such as 347 West 36th Street in the Garment District, the Winoker Realty president took over the family business from his father, Sid, over two decades ago.

“Dave will be missed more than I can express at this moment,” said Winoker’s surviving partner, Corey Abdo, a principal and executive vice president at the firm. “But his legacy survives, and the wonderful team of professionals he assembled and guided will make that legacy even stronger in the years ahead.”

In 1992, a bloody civil war broke out in what was then the nation of Yugoslavia. And in New York, a young financial consultant in her first year at Insignia/ESG decided to buy a house.

“People said: you’re 29, you’re single, why do you need a house?” says Snezana Anderson, now a senior vice president at CBRE. “But we didn’t know what was going to happen, and I wanted a place my family could go.”

Anderson became a broker in 1994, and to date she has negotiated leases totaling approximately 2.8 million square feet. Her clients include the French government and major data center operators, as well as a number of New York City property owners.

Earlier this year, she represented the liquor giant Pernod Ricard in a deal to lease 82,300 s/f at 250 Park Avenue. And she still owns that house — in North Bergen, NJ — along with several apartments in New York, Paris, Florida and Belgrade.

With New York’s economy continuing to rebound, demand for flashy new condo projects is soaring.

In only three weeks, sales at Chelsea Green, Alfa Development’s 51-unit condo building on West 21st Street, reached the 50 per cent mark.

With prices at the building ranging from $995,000 for a one-bedroom to $8.38 million for a four-bedroom penthouse with a private roof terrace, sales have totaled over $31 million so far.

By Al Barbarino

Rental rates continue spiral as buyers look to Manhattan multifamily properties as a reliable investment — even as a wave of new construction lies over the horizon.

The apartment building became the darling of the industry during the recession, as would-be homeowners flocked to the rental market, along with investors.

The trend continues in an era marked by extremely low development and construction.

“There’s no meaningful amount of rental product coming onto the market,” said James P. Nelson, a partner at Massey Knakal.

Even with construction still underway, the effects of Barclays Center Arena are being felt in the neighborhood, where property owners report that the going rent for retail space has more than doubled.

When Atlantic Terminal opened across from the basketball arena site in 2003, rents for 1,000 s/f spaces were in the range of $50 to $60 per square foot, Kathryn Welch, a senior vice president at Forest City Ratner, told attendees at TerraCRG Brooklyn Real Estate Summit last week. Today the same spaces are going for $100 per foot. 

Investment analysts have put a $4.4 billion value on the massive Stuyvesant Town apartment complex on Manhattan’s East Side.

The team of experts from J.P. Morgan that analyzed the current debt structure of the 11,200 apartment complex concluded that the most likley buyer of the distressed property will be a partnership formed late last year between its current tenants and property behemoth Brookfield.

But it warned that it could take years to unravel the tangled web of legal and financial woes that have engulfed the development since former owners Tishman Speyer handed the keys back to lenders after defaulting on the $5.4 billion mortgage it took out with partner BlackRock in 2006.