The Real Deal - New York Real Estate News

In December, Aby Rosen’s RFR Realty faced eviction from the Gramercy Park Hotel when it fell nearly $1 million behind on ground lease payments. Now, landlord Solil Management, which owns the dirt under the iconic hotel, wants to terminate RFR’s long-term lease and collect the $79.5 million it’s owed under the terms of the deal, according to a lawsuit filed Friday in New York Supreme Court. RFR owns the hotel itself but pays Solil more

The Gowanus rezoning, after months of delay, may be able to move forward within days. Judge Katherine Levine “indicated she could allow the Gowanus Neighborhood Plan to move into public review as soon as Monday,” the Department of City Planning announced late Friday. The news follows two closed-door meetings with the judge this week. Another is scheduled for Monday. Nothing is official yet: Levine still needs to lift a temporary restraining order before City Planning

When Rudy Giuliani was mayor, he liked to call the city’s Off-Track Betting the only bookie in the world that loses money. It looks like Suffolk OTB is having better luck. The Hauppauge-based bookie is buying out a company that owns Jake’s 58, the video-lottery casino and adjoining 228-key hotel in Islandia, in a roughly $120 million deal, according to Newsday. That price tag also includes a buy-out of Buffalo-based hospitality company Delaware North’s management

Onni Group plans to transform industrial Goose Island with a mixed-use megaproject that would bring 2,650 apartments and a hotel spread across five towers, all inside eight acres of land. The Vancouver-based firm, which has developed houses, apartments and commercial buildings across the U.S., unveiled plans for Halsted Point on Thursday night, the Chicago Tribune and Crain’s reported. The highlights include four residential towers, with the tallest rising 56 stories; a 28-story high-rise with a

Residential brokerage Douglas Elliman is gone to Texas. The firm announced Thursday it will expand its presence in the Lone Star State to include Dallas and Austin, two cities where home prices have grown at a rapid rate. It already has a presence in Houston, and will continue its partnership with Knight Frank in the state. “Texas is the most exciting market in the country right now with buyers from California, New York and Florida

SUNY Empire is moving to Midtown from Hudson Square while chopping its Manhattan footprint and leasing cost by almost half. Empire State College, part of the State University of New York, has signed a 10-year lease for the 29,747-square-foot space at 4 Park Avenue owned by the Feil Organization. The college’s current Manhattan location is at 325 Hudson Street, where it leases two and a half floors — about 55,000 square feet — for its

A sprawling penthouse at 15 Central Park West sold on Tuesday for $46.67 million, 28 percent less than its first asking price. The 5,902-square-foot duplex is on the 18th and 19th floors of the renowned condominium designed by architect Robert A.M. Stern. The property went into contract and closed in one day to an unknown buyer who purchased the unit through a Delaware-registered limited liability company. The seller was Dr. Lindsay Rosenwald, the chief executive

Amol Sarva has shared new details about how Knotel’s partnership with Newmark turned hostile. In a video interview, Sarva said Cantor Fitzgerald CEO Howard Lutnick, whom he holds in low regard, pulled the strings that forced his company into bankruptcy. “It was just like [a] consummate Wall Street type,” Sarva said in a 12-minute interview with Business of Business posted Thursday. Newmark was the stalking-horse bidder in Knotel’s bankruptcy and purchased the company in March.

UPDATED, April 16, 2021, 2:55 p.m.: An iconic — if not well-loved — Fifth Avenue building has changed hands. The Childs Building at 604 Fifth Avenue sold to the Japanese snack chain Minamoto Kitchoan for just under $45 million, according to a deed filed with the city on Friday. The six-story building was previously home to an 18,000-square-foot TGI Fridays. Now, Minamoto Kitchoan will use the space for a new flagship. “With the retail and sales

The residential real estate market set all kinds of records in March. The median home price hit an all-time high of $353,000, a 17 percent increase from the same time in 2020, according to a new Redfin analysis first reported by Inman. Forty-two percent of the homes that sold in March netted more than their listing price, also a record high. And for the first time since Redfin began tracking, the sale-to-list ratio was above

Spring homebuilding season is here — and not a moment too soon. Privately owned housing starts surged to a seasonally adjusted rate of 1.739 million, up 19.4 percent from February’s revised rate of 1.457 million, according to the Census Bureau’s monthly report. Compared to the same time last year, housing starts were up 37 percent. March’s report comes after two months of decreased levels of new residential construction. Single-family starts were up 15.3 percent month-over-month.

New York City’s chief lawyer and the state’s attorney general have joined a nonprofit housing corporation’s fight over ownership of a multifamily building in Brooklyn. RiseBoro Community Partnership is appealing a court decision that blocks it from taking ownership of 420 Stockholm Street in Bushwick, The City reported. SunAmerica Housing Fund, a subsidiary of insurance giant AIG, invested in RiseBoro’s 29,000-square-foot affordable housing building through the federal Low Income Housing Tax Credit program in 1999.

New York legislators are still figuring out what a comprehensive commercial-to-residential program could look like in the city, but developers are already looking for opportunities. Metroloft Management, which has previously undertaken office-to-residential conversions, has found two “perfect targets” for market-rate rentals in Lower Manhattan, managing principal Nathan Berman told the New York Times. A deal to purchase those Class B buildings, which Berman declined to identify, is underway. “Covid has expedited the ultimate repurposing,” he

Ilan Bracha is headed back to agent life. The mega broker-turned-businessman and five members of his real estate group, IB Global, are the newest arrivals at the Corcoran Group. This week, Bracha’s team, which includes himself, three other agents and two management heads, joined Corcoran’s East Side office. The move comes just over a year after Bracha sold his Manhattan brokerage, Keller Williams NYC, which he co-founded in 2011. That franchise region has since been

Since first taking up 83,000 square feet at One Park Avenue in 1999, NYU Langone Medical Center has expanded its office space at the property more than 10 times. The medical center most recently increased its footprint last fall, bringing the total to 633,000 square feet in one of Manhattan’s largest office leases of 2020, according to Colliers International. Located four blocks west of Langone’s main medical campus on First Avenue in Midtown South, the

In New Jersey, office supply far outweighs demand for that space. The Garden State’s office availability rate in the first quarter climbed to 21.6 percent, up 4 percentage points compared to the same time last year, according to a report from Avison Young New Jersey. “Absorption continues to be negative for the third quarter in a row, a trend that reflects the tremendous effect the pandemic has had on the sector,” said Jeff Heller, the

Former Duke Properties executive Sarah Lazar is suing CEO Albert Dweck, accusing him of misappropriating company money to fund his lavish lifestyle. But according to the Dumbo-based company, its former COO is just seeking a bigger payout than she is entitled to after failing to convince a judge that she was wrongfully fired. The departed executive filed a complaint in Manhattan Supreme Court Tuesday alleging that Dweck repeatedly used Duke funds for personal expenses, including