By Steven Spinola
President
Real Estate Board of New York.

Deals that help the growth and prosperity of our economy were recently awarded with the Real Estate Board of New York’s coveted Retail Deal of the Year Awards.

More than 200 people attended the annual cocktail party on June 12 at the 101 Club to hear the 2012 winners announced.

Eleven top-notch real estate dealmakers submitted retail transactions for a chance to compete for the two most distinguished awards in the industry that highlight the most inventive and noteworthy New York City retail deals of the past year.

By Sarah Trefethen

For one year in the 1960s, Rosemary Scanlon toured the US with her then-husband, an actor who was serving as an understudy to Martin Sheen.

Between looking after baby Charlie Sheen (“he was Carlos then,”) and loading and unloading the wardrobe trucks, Scanlon, an economist who till that time had focused her research on emerging economies, found herself pondering the fate of America’s cities.

“Everywhere we went we stayed downtown,” says Scanlon, who was named divisional dean of New York University’s Schack Institute for Real Estate in April. “I was shocked at the condition of urban America. I couldn’t get over, ‘What has happened to these great cities? They had no vibrant downtowns left.’ I was shocked at how desolate some of them seemed to be.”

It was defining moment in the career of a woman from Antigonish, Nova Scotia – a town of just 6,000 people.

By Al Barbarino

With Formula One’s Grand Prix of America set to rumble through New Jersey beginning in June 2013, property owners are likely to consider the idea of renting out their digs to visiting motor-heads.

At first glance, New Jersey – the oft dubbed Armpit of America – might not sound like the go-to spot to hold an event with as much history and prestige as Formula One. It’s not quite as glamorous or exotic as Monaco, Melbourne, Valencia, or Singapore, other current Formula One street circuits.

But some of the most expensive properties in New Jersey lie along the racecourse – carved through the towns of West New York and Weehawken – and fanatics are likely to shell out premium coin to get as close to the driver’s seat as possible.

By Sarah Trefethen

At the end of 2009, in one of the worst real estate markets in recent history, Lawrence Rich sold a Manhattan home for $14 million cash.

“Just because the market isn’t good doesn’t mean there aren’t people buying and selling,” he says. “I do things by my heart. Sometimes someone comes into your life and they really don’t want to tell you very much about themselves, but something in your heart tells you they’re worth spending your time with.”

By Sarah Trefethen

When the new hotel and residential complex scheduled for completion at Brooklyn Bridge Park in 2015 opens its doors, residents and guests will have as their backyard and playground 85 acres of reclaimed waterfront that its builders and designers hail as a model of sustainable, eco-friendly design.

Brooklyn Bridge Park, designed by the landscape architecture firm Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates, has been under construction in phases since 2010.

Its forward-thinking and award-winning design was crafted to pay tribute to the history of the waterfront, including the reintroduction of native waterfront plants and the reuse of building materials in the park infrastructure.

Silverstein Properties President and CEO Larry A. Silverstein was joined by approximately 1,000 construction
workers and other New York government, civic and business leaders at a topping out ceremony marking the completion of steel erection for the new 4 World Trade Center – the first office tower that will be completed and opened on the original 16-acre World Trade Center site. The final steel beam, which weighed 8 tons and was adorned with an American flag, was signed by Silverstein and other dignitaries. It was then raised 977 feet in the air and placed at the top the 72-story tower.