News
HOTTEST DEALS OF 2011
December 22, 2011
| What a year it’s been for the Big Apple (and you still have a week to trump everything that’s happened so far). It’s nearly impossible to list all of the exciting deals and developments that happened in 2011, but here are some that top Bisnow’s list. |
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| The most talked-about lease: Condé Nast’s 25-year, 1M SF at One World Trade Center, where the publisher will be moving thousands of employees from 4 Times Square to floors 20 through 41 at the 3M SF, $3.1B tower. Consider it the most festive construction site of the season: last week, Five Star Electric (the tower’s electrical contractor) placed colored cellophane wrapping around the existing exterior lights to create the holiday display. The tower has reached the 90th floor—only 14 more to go. The steel will top out in Q1 and the entire building will finish by the end of 2013. Last week,PANYNJ’s board approved nearly $76M for investment in seven of the site’s contracts. |
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| Here’s the all-star panel at Bisnow’s The World Trade Center and the Future of Downtown event at 7 World Trade Center July 20: Fried Frank partner Jonathan Mechanic; Cushman & Wakefield vice chairman Tara Stacom; CBRE NY Tri-State region CEO Mary Ann Tighe; Silverstein Properties CEO Larry Silverstein; and PANYNJ exec director Chris Ward. Among the market’s coups this year:Oppenheimer & Co’s 15-year, 270k SF lease at 85 Broad St; UDR snapping up the Dwell95 apartment community on Wall Street from The Moinian Group for $325M; Duane Reade’s 23k SF lease at 40 Wall St; and TJ Maxx’s 32k SF lease at 14 Wall St, the first national brand retailer to move into the heart of FiDi. |
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| The World Financial Center was pretty hoppin’ too. Bank of America/Merrill Lynch inked the submarket’s second-largest lease, a 767k SF renewal at Two and Four World Financial Center. In conjunction, owner Brookfield Office Properties purchased the tenant’s 49% interest in Four World Financial Center for $264M and now owns the entire 1.9M SF tower. There's more: Brookfield launched a $250M redevelopment of the complex’s retail offerings, while Oppenheimer Funds signed for 236k SF and Commerzbank for 173k SF at Two World Financial Center. |
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| We can’t forget the other hot market: the West Side. Above, the illustrious panel at Bisnow’s Evolution of Times Square and the West Side event March 2 at Eleven Times Square: RKF chairman Robert Futterman, Related Hudson Yards prez Jay Cross, Larry Silverstein (he’s everywhere), CBRE chairman of global brokerage Steve Siegel, Proskauer Rose partner Ron Sernau, Africa-Israel USA general counsel Laurie Golub, SJP Properties chairman Steve Pozycki, and Cushman & Wakefield chairman Bruce Mosler. Proskauer moved into 400k SF at the building earlier this year as anchor. A short walk away, Nomura signed to 900k SF at Worldwide Plaza, a 2013 relo from Two World Financial Center. |
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| Of course, the market is still abuzz over Related’s 26-acre Hudson Yards (above, 12M SF of commercial and residential) and Brookfield’s five-acre West Side rail yards (more than 5M SF of office and mixed-use) developments. Coach announced a 600k SF commitment to anchor the initial 1.7M SF tower of Hudson Yards, which will kick-start construction in the area along with the 7 Line extension and the new Hudson Park and Boulevard. (The tower’s construction will begin mid-2012 and be ready for occupancy in 2015.) Another biggie: The Gotham Org’s $520M, four-building residential development spanning West 44th to 45th streets from Tenth to Eleventh avenues. It's 1,200 units of luxury and income-restricted housing, as well as a new elementary school. |
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| The crowd at Bisnow’s Hospitality Investment Summit on July 27 at The Roosevelt, one of the 12 events we put on this year in New York and 230 nationwide. NYC is ending the year on a high note: Mayor Mike announced Tuesday that NYC will reach 50.2 million visitors by year’s end (the goal was 50 million visitors by 2012) and 10.1 million are international visitors, a 4% increase over last year. That’s $32B in visitor spending, $48B in economic impact, and contributions to 320,000 jobs. By year’s end, we’ll have more than 90,000 hotel rooms across the five boroughs. |
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| Furthering the City’s diversification efforts, Hizzoner, Cornell University, and Technion-Israel Institute of Technology announced Monday that the Cornell-Technion partnership will build an 11-acre, 2M SF applied sciences campus on Roosevelt Island. When completed, this campus will result in a nearly 70% increase in the number of full-time, graduate engineering students enrolled in NYC Master’s and PhD programs. We can’t even fit all the great developments and deals into this issue (like NBC Universal’s 1.4M SF lease at three Rockefeller Center buildings). We even counted more than 20 sales, partial interest deals, and refinancings over $500M. What was your favorite deal of the year? |
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| Here’s to an even better 2012 (but you only have 365 days until the end of the world). Thank you to our 25,000 readers who’ve attended our events, sent us story ideas, and kept Bisnow on our toes—New York wouldn’t be as great without all of you! We’re taking a much-needed breather next week to spend time with our families and recharge for an epic 2012—we’ll be back in full force on Jan. 3. Meanwhile, keep sending your big deals, big stories, and big boxes of chocolates to amanda@bisnow.com andamanda.metcalf@bisnow.com. Happy holidays and a prosperous New Year! |
