After a successful if rather macabre run as the Addam's family matriarch Morticia, Brooke Shields left Broadway with a grand bow and rousing applause in late December. Little did we know she was plotting another Broadway exit: Ms. Shields and husband Chris Henchy have sold their co-op at 458 Broadway, city records show. Read More
Still, things are not changing so much. As previously, pretentiously noted, Smith Street it ain't, nor is it going to be. This is still a discount strip. From H&M to Target, the Gap to the almost-Filene's, the newcomers have been far from high end—not counting the hamburgers. For further proof of the trend toward the same, welcome Century 21 to the neighborhood. Read More
While 15 Central Park West may be the most desired address in Manhattan for wealthy foreigners and finance mucketys, Riverhouse has proved to have lasting appeal for the celeb set. With Leo "Baseball Cap" DiCaprio" and Tyra "I'm Still Famous" Banks leading the charge at the eco-friendly downtown condo, Hollywoodians looking to chill with their ilk have been flocking down to the tony waterfront habitation.
It seems like the Riverhouse red carpet will continue to unfurl in 2012: Cobie Smulders of How I Met Your Mother and hubby Taran Killam (you may remember him as Jimmy the Overly Touchy Orderly on Scrubs) have purchased a unit at 2 River Terrace, city records show. Read More
Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz has been stamping his feet for years over his desire to land the holy grail of retailers: an Apple Store. After all, the M.T.A. bent over backwards to bringing a glowing Temple of Jobs into Grand Central. But it looks like Marty can forget about it, as Apple may be opening its next outer borough outlet in Queens County, not Kings County. Read More
M. Night Shyamalan sells Tribeca pad for $9.5 million after two years. [Real Deal]
Technical glitch pushes back release of property tax roles one day. [NY Post]
More great, green affordable housing coming to the South Bronx. [Curbed]
The Kushners (our owners) avoid disaster at 666 Fifth, with a little help. [NY Times]
And is his father-in-law getting a sweetheart deal on Bronx course? [Daily News]
Big building deals rebounded last year, but it may not last. [Crain's]
And so power in negotiations is swinging back to the tenants. [NY Times]
City studying cellphone tech to find parking spots. [NY Post]
A beauty in Ditmas Park. [Journal]
A sleek "Silicon Alley" townhouse in Chelsea. [Curbed]
How many cops does it take to ticket a cyclist? At least eight. [Streetsblog]
Atlantic Yards adjacent warehouse being marketed for retail. [Brownstoner]
Among the reasons New York has the finest skyline in the world—consider that a statement of fact, not opinion—is not simply the skyscrapers bounding up the island of Manhattan but also their unusual arrangement. Like a great mountain range, the city is arrayed around the twin peaks of Downtown and Midtown.
Perhaps the appeal is Freudian.
It has long been believed that New Yorkers could thank God for their unusual agglomeration of buildings (or, for those on the Upper West Side not believing in His good work, eons of geological development). It turns out that Manhattan has a bedrock unusually suited to the construction of very tall buildings, in many cases just a few meters below the surface. But that solid land drops away in the gooey middle of the island, long limiting the heights of buildings in the city.
Or so the aphocraphists have been passing down for decades, at least since noted geologist Christopher J. Schuberth released his seminal The Geology of New York City and Environs in 1968. Therein, he posited his belief in a correlation between bedrock and big buildings, and like the Empire State Building, it has stood the test of time. But like a bad retaining wall, it all came tumbling down last month. Read More
Until very recently, Richard Silver was your average above-average New York real estate broker. The part-time photographer (his work was once shown at the Met) worked at Corcoran for over twelve years, eventually making vice-president. A member of the firm’s “Multi-Million Dollar Sales Club” for several consecutive years, Mr. Silver lived comfortably in Chelsea. While Read More
From the moment you walk through the doors of 757 Third Avenue, you know the building is different from the average, anonymous East Side office tower.
One of the lesser works of the monolithic Emery Roth & Sons—they of GM and Look and Pan Am buildings fame—757 Third is the typical wedding-cake office building. A banded obsidian glass curtain wall with those I-beam mullions, it is the sentinel we’ve seen before, cast ever so slightly anew in a thousand business districts the world over. Seagrams lite with a splash of Chase Manhattan.
That is why walking into, or really out of, 757 Third is such a dramatic experience. The 28-story building may have the nicest revolving doors in the entire city. Set into two curving, scythelike glass panels, the building’s egress does not really have an edge, and so when stepping out onto the street through those spinning doors, it is as though the building suddenly disappears. You have left the warm confines of this sleek building and are back on the cold New York City street. You might even stop to gasp at the trick if the door were not coming up behind you, about to deliver a smack in the toosh. Read More
Conde Nast has reportedly agreed to take on an additional 133,000 square feet of office space at 1 World Trade Center, adding to the 1.05 million it has already committed to at the yet-to-be-completed skyscraper, the New York Post reported.
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Perhaps the best way to describe Angela Pinsky’s advocacy for the real estate industry is by saying that when she joined the Real Estate Board of New York almost two years ago, she didn’t see her job as much different from the one she was leaving in the mayor’s office.
“I work on a lot of the same issues,” said Ms. Pinsky, who married Economic Development Corporation head Seth Pinsky last summer. “The thing about the real estate industry, it’s very civic minded. Many owners are family businesses and there’s this strong tradition in the industry of wanting projects and policies that are best not just for the industry’s own interests, but for the entire city.
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It was a typical evening at the Real Estate Board of New York’s annual gala as John Cardinal O’Connor stepped up to the dais to address a crowd of several thousand of the city’s most ambitious commercial real estate brokers and owners.
But in a ritual repeated more or less each year, the archbishop of the New York archdiocese’s 2.37 million Catholics and one of the Vatican’s most forceful spokesmen in the United States during the 1980s, was summarily ignored by a brokerage community far more interested in making deals than in hearing the Gospel.
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Readers know we love a good carousel around these part, which is why the news that the one in Forest Hills Park may soon start spinning again brings childish glee to The Observer's pink hearts. And it turns out the savior is an unusual sort: the same Italian amusement operator that has revived Coney Island in recent years. Read More
Since it started with a roll call of 27 members in 1896 with the goal of “facilitating transactions in real estate,” the Real Estate Board of New York has indisputably been the city’s most influential real estate organization, with its annual gala being to brokers what the Vanity Fair Oscar party is for Hollywood: If you’re there, it means you’re somebody.
Sure, some may lovingly write it off as a veritable men’s club (men are thought to outnumber women five to one), chide it as “The Liar’s Ball” (each year is a broker’s best year, no matter how wretched the marketplace) and speak ill of the food (nearly everyone avoids the chicken and filet mignon).
But the REBNY gala is as essential to a real estate person’s reputation and status as the buildings and bricks he works with. A dozen of the city’s most legendary players spoke to The Commercial Observer about the blurry nights and boom years that helped make the event what it is today. Read More
As her brother-in-law faces a toughh re-election in France, it seems Charlotte Sarkozy has a different set of priorities. Ms. Sarkozy, who is locked in divorce proceedings with the president' s half brother, has just purchased condo at 125 East 74th Street on the Upper East Side. Read More
The transformation of West 42nd Street is finally happening. [NY Post]
Is Brownsville hopeless? [NY Times]
Malcolm Forbes' old Village townhouse finally sold after a year. [Real Deal]
The Chinese are coming! Media companies set up headquarters. [Journal]
But we need them, as commercial property sales plunge. [Journal]
Transit workers and M.T.A. still far apart on contract talks. [NY Post]
A tasteless UES candy store sweetens up. [DNAinfo]
Nobody is picking up the garbage in the Bronx. [Daily News]
Coney Island "junk of history" revealed after sign torn down. [Curbed]
Marc Jacobs' new showroom is the "anti-Soho." [Journal]
Baby born on PATH train as it rushed under the Hudson. [NY Post]
They really know how to make those Victorian homes ugly. [Brownstoner]
