Stephen Ross

If their paper trail is any evidence, the ungodly economy is not preventing Mort Zuckerman and Stephen Ross from moving forward with plans to build an enormous office tower at 740 Eighth Avenue.

Word of the tower has been seeping into the news since last year, when Boston Properties and Related Companies revealed they were putting together the project’s footprint by buying out about six property owners at a reported price of $350 million.

The tower—on the east side of Eighth Avenue, between 45th and 46th streets, alongside the Imperial Theater and the Music Box—could rival the neighboring SJP Properties’ 11 Times Square and the New York Times tower in size at a possible 1 million square feet.  read more »

The proposals to redevelop Pier 57 on Hudson River Park have been released, and it seems like rent-paying marketplace is the common theme for the pier off West 15th Street.

The Related Companies, West Village-based YoungWoo & Associates, and the Durst Organization/C&K Properties are the three suitors, each trying to impress the city/state Hudson River Park Trust. All three teams put forward a plan with outdoor open space and a large amount of market-retail space (two of the teams mentioned Seattle’s Pike Place as a corollary).

This is the second go-round for the Trust, which awarded the development rights for the pier back in 2005 to the Witkoff Group.  read more »

Some marriages were meant to be.

Signature Theater Company has been something of an orphan of late, having been invited to, then booted out of a planned World Trade Center performing arts center last year. It has a home on the West Side, but has been looking for a bigger one in which to expand.

At the same time, the Related Companies has been hanging its head low since the Bloomberg administration and community members scoffed in 2006 at its plan to put a Cirque du Soleil theater in the base of a new West Side tower, thereby getting a special theater development "bonus" for the site.  read more »

The bruising, drawn-out skirmish over the development of Pier 40 in the far West Village apparently has not scared the real estate world away from the water. A few blocks to the north, by West 15th Street, another site, Pier 57, has attracted the eyes of development heavies, as three firms submitted bids to the Hudson River Park Trust on Oct. 17 to develop the pier, numerous people familiar with the bids told The Observer.

Stephen Ross’ Related Companies, the firm that was beaten back earlier this year by Village residents from creating a mega-entertainment complex at Pier 40, is back for more, as is Douglas Durst, in a joint venture between his Durst Organization and C & K Properties.  read more »

The bruising, drawn-out skirmish over the development of Pier 40 in the far West Village apparently has not scared the development world away from the water. A few blocks to the north, by West 15th Street, another site, Pier 57, has attracted the eyes of real estate heavies, as three firms submitted bids to the Hudson River Park Trust on Oct. 17 to develop the pier, numerous people familiar with the bids told The Observer.

Stephen Ross’ Related Companies, the firm that was beaten back earlier this year by Village residents from creating a mega-entertainment complex at Pier 40, is back for more, as is Douglas Durst, in a joint venture between his Durst Organization and C & K Properties. Young Woo & Associates, a smaller developer that recently built the 20-story Chelsea Arts Tower on West 25th Street, is also bidding.

More in Wednesday's Observer print edition.

Centerline Holding Company, headed by Related Companies bigwig (and REBNY chairman) Stephen Ross, may not be able to meet its short-term debt obligations, according to this morning's Wall Street Journal, which cited a Moody's Investment Services report that further cut Centerline's credit rating.

Here's more:

The move comes as the credit-market turmoil, coupled with the weakening commercial real-estate market, has severely hurt Centerline's business of lending to owners and developers of office, retail, multifamily and other types of properties. A potential default by Centerline would also deal a blow to Mr. Ross, who made an equity infusion in Centerline in December 2007. Mr. Ross's company, Related Cos., is the largest shareholder of Centerline. He didn't return a call seeking comment.

Moody's, which downgraded the company's rating to B1 from Ba3, said in a news release that it believes Centerline's "liquidity resources may not be adequate for meeting its near term needs." In particular, the credit-rating firm noted that Centerline must repay in full a term loan by Dec. 31.

 read more »

Pretty gosh darned rich, according to Forbes magazine.

Twelve of New York’s celebrated real estate titans bought, sold and leveraged their way onto or up Forbes' 2008 list of the 400 wealthiest Americans. While the vast sums of wealth are truly staggering, New York’s wealthy real estate developers still lag far behind the big players on Wall Street; in fact, no real estate developer was rich enough to crack America’s top 50–-Paul Milstein and family were closest at No. 68.

The list: wealth (in billions) and ranking

• Paul Milstein and family: $5 (68)
• Richard LeFrak and family: $4.5 (78)
• Stephen Ross: $4.5 (78)
• Leonard Stern: $3.7 (97)
• Donald Trump: $3 (134)
• Mort Zuckerman: $2.8 (147)
• John Catsimatidis: $2.1 (215)
• Sheldon Solow: $2 (227)
• Jerry Speyer: $2 (227)
• Tamir Sapir: $1.9 (246)
• Leon Charney: $1.5 (321)
• Steve Roth: $1.3 (377)

The Forbes 400 capped a rather unpleasant year for Harry Macklowe. Last year, Mr. Macklowe was the 239th wealthiest American, with an estimated fortune of $2 billion and an impressive portfolio of some of New York's finest real estate (the GM Building!). This year: unranked.

Portfolio has a profile of Related Companies chairman Steve Ross today, and along with it, a video of the magazine's real estate forum at the Four Seasons last month, where Joanne Lipman, Portfolio's editor, queried—somewhat awkwardly, at times—Mr. Ross, Vornado chairman Steve Roth, and Elliman superbroker Dolly Lenz.

(For more on Mr. Ross, we have an unrelated story on Related and a West Side tower in today's print edition.)

Stephen Ross apparently is rather intent on getting a development bonus for a new far West Side tower.

Mr. Ross, chairman of development giant the Related Companies, is seeking, once again, to fill the base of a planned 58-story, 1.2 million-square-foot hotel and residential building on 42nd Street and 10th Avenue with a theater, thereby taking advantage of a zoning code bonus that allows for a bigger tower overhead.

Related, which met opposition in 2005 when it tried to bring Cirque du Soleil to the tower, is now in advanced talks with the Signature Theater Company to be the main theatrical tenant in the tower, according to people familiar with discussions.  read more »

In case there was any doubt, Steve Roth and Steve Ross really want Madison Square Garden to move.

This morning, some 13 weeks after Madison Square Garden announced it was renovating and staying in place (i.e. not moving), the developer duo professed, once again, their eagerness to see the Paterson administration pick up the ball and move forward with the large-scale Moynihan Station plan. The plan, in its most recent iteration, would involve the state using Port Authority money intended for regional transportation projects to buy the Garden and its air rights from the Dolan family—that is, if they’re willing to sell (the Dolans have expressed no interest and are moving forward with the renovation).  read more »

Stephen Ross must be Mayor Bloomberg’s best friend in the world right now.

The bulk of the so-called mega-projects around the city are in shambles or facing major hurdles; the term “lame duck mayor” has been popping up with increasing frequency around City Hall; and the city’s economic outlook remains bleak for some time to come.  read more »

The storyline behind Related’s surprise win in the West Side rail yards bidding goes, more or less, as follows, according to a Monday afternoon press conference with M.T.A. officials and Related Chairman Stephen Ross:

Back in the late winter, when a round of bids was due to the M.T.A., executives at News Corp. gave Related Companies a call within 24 hours of the bid deadline, announcing that the company would not commit to becoming an anchor tenant in Related's bid as it had previously indicated. With little time to think before its bid was due, and at a time when Bear Stearns was collapsing, Related backed out of its full bid, hoping to hang on to a partial deal for the western half of the rail yards.  read more »

It’s official: Jumping back from the collapse of a deal with Tishman Speyer Properties, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority is going with Stephen Ross’ Related Companies to develop the West Side rail yards, Manhattan’s largest remaining parcel of developable land.

As we first reported last night, Related snapped up the deal from the M.T.A. less than a week after it abandoned talks with Tishman Speyer. Tishman—apparently scared off by the tremendous risk involved in developing with no anchor tenant, a parcel in need of rezoning and an inclement lending market—tried to change the terms of the deal to lessen its risk at the last minute.

In a release from the M.T.A., it seems the agency gave Related, in a partnership with Goldman Sachs, an option to have more time to build before they start making rent payments if the developer so chooses, allowing the team to defer payments for two years.

The deal is very similar to the Tishman proposal in terms of finances, pegged at $1.054 billion in net present value.  read more »

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has reached a tentative deal to award development rights for the West Side rail yards to the Related Companies, according to a person familiar with discussions. The deal for the 26-acre site on Manhattan’s West Side comes less than a week after the M.T.A. broke off talks for the property with Tishman Speyer, the major development firm that was announced the winning bidder in late March.  read more »

Developers Vornado Realty Trust and the Related Companies are grasping for options to keep alive a multibillion dollar redo of Penn Station and related real estate development, as they have asked the city and state to back a loan to build a new Madison Square Garden in the Farley Post Office across Eight Avenue.

The proposal is intended to lure the Garden back to the table, as the company, led by Chairman James Dolan, pulled out of the larger plan in March. The state is considering the offer as one of many options for the project, a state official confirmed.

In this option, the state and city could be saddled with the cost of the arena—said to be in the range of $900 million to $1 billion—should the larger redo of Penn Station ultimately fall apart.  read more »

A team led by the Hudson Companies will give rise to a mixed-income village along the banks of the once-toxic Gowanus Canal, the city's Department of Housing Preservation and Development announced today. The Gowanus “Public Place” will have 774 units of housing (541 below market rate) among a complex of buildings, and comes as the city eyes a transformation for the once (and still, to some extent) industrial area.

The winning team, which also includes the Bluestone Organization, the Fifth Avenue Committee and Jonathan Rose Companies, beat out Stephen Ross, the Miami Dolphins-owning, constantly building CEO of The Related Companies.

Mr. Ross, who built the Time Warner Center, has had a big string of defeats in the competitions on publicly-owned land. Related’s Pier 40 proposal has been all but tossed out, the company lost its bid for the West Side rail yards after News Corp. pulled out as an anchor tenant, and now this.

Toll Brothers has its own residential project lining the Canal, as does Whole Foods, which is trying to put a supermarket on a brownfield.  read more »

Despite the national housing market crisis and some serious global competition, Manhattan real estate moguls maintained a commanding presence in the billionaires club in 2008, according to Forbes’ annual list.

Donald Trump fell from No. 314 in 2007 to 368 this year with a net worth of $3 billion. The founder of Related Companies, Stephen Ross, jumped from No.  read more »

Two years after the Related Companies was denied an attempt to bring the Cirque de Soleil to midtown, the Department of City Planning is seeking to change its regulations for development in part of the theater district.  read more »

Stephen Ross’s Related Companies is receiving an infusion of $1.4 billion from investors, including Goldman Sachs and investment firms from the Middle East, according to an article in today’s Wall Street Journal [subscription].

The firm is apparently now worth about $5 billion, the Journal tells us:  read more »

Probably never had so many of New York’s real estate elite crammed themselves into such a small space as happened Sunday afternoon at the press preview of proposals to develop the Western Rail Yards: Steve Roth, Stephen Ross, Jerry Speyer and his son Rob, Ric Clark, Gary Barnett, Steven Holl, Helmut Jahn and Rafael Pelli. S.I. Newhouse even dropped by, very casually dressed, as proof that if Mr. Roth’s bid won, he’d move Condé Nast west to 10th Avenue.

They all crammed themselves into a vacant storefront on West 43rd Street to show of their versions of New York’s future: towering buildings that will pack some 30,000 residents and workers into a six-square block area along the Hudson River, between 30th and 33rd streets. The architectural models themselves costs tens of thousands of dollars; the bids, submitted last month, ate up a few million, according to a number of developers.

Not surprisingly, the five teams talked a lot about how their particular plan creates a vibrant new neighborhood-- this, after all, is the retail version of the plans. No financials were disclosed, and the point is to try to curry favor with the public to create a popular favorite. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority--which, with the Bloomberg administration’s input, will choose the winner in the next few months--has got to pay more attention to how much money each team is offering, when they’d be able to pay it, and how likely they’d get it done.

“There are two or three of these that are done by teams that are really competent,” said Mr. Roth, “and in the end I think it's going to be the financial part of the deal that is going to differentiate them.”

Each of the plans profess to save the northern section of the High Line and promise to provide at least some affordable housing. The tallest buildings would stretch 1,000, 1,100, even 1,300 feet into the air. (The Empire State Building now clocks in at 1,250 feet.) The cost, according to a number of the developers, will likely come in between $10 billion to $20 billion, with completion anticipated in the early 2020’s

There were also plenty of wild and creative ideas, like, from Brookfield Properties, Diller Scofidio & Renfro's towers (pictured above) that are joined by a quarter-mile running track; mechanisms to reuse sullage for irrigation; patent-pending technology to create a better platform over the rail yards; a movie screen on which 20th Century Fox could premiere new films; and so on.

The exhibit of the five proposals, which includes architectural models, displays and videos, will be open to the public every day for the next two weeks, from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., starting today (with the exception of Thanksgiving). The address is 335 Madison Avenue, although the storefront is really located at the northwest corner of 43rd Street and Vanderbilt Avenue. Comment cards will be available for visitors to give input.

The Real Estate will post synopses of the five designs throughout the day.

Here comes the Eighth Avenue boom crashing through the Theater District, with Stephen Ross’ Related Companies giddily leading the caravan.  read more »

Can the Time Warner Center developer and Related chairman put a friendlier face on the New York real estate industry?  read more »

Deputy Mayor Dan Doctoroff’s right-hand man in the unsuccessful bid to land the 2012 Olympics started work on Monday at the Related Companies, according to The New York Times. Jay L. Kriegel became a senior adviser to the firm and to its chairman and C.E.O., Stephen Ross. Mr. Ross is also chairman of the Real Estate Board of New York.

New Yorkers of a certain age may know Mr. Kriegel best by the role he played as an aide to Mayor John Lindsay in the Serpico police-corruption brouhaha of the early 1970's. Here's an excerpt from Time magazine in January 1972:

In earlier testimony in closed sessions, Mayoral Assistant Jay Kriegel, 31, whom Lindsay has called the "best staff man in America," had admitted going to the mayor in 1967 with the sordid details of police crime that Detective Frank Serpico and Sergeant David Durk had given him. By the testimony of Durk and Serpico, Kriegel came back to them to report that the Lindsay administration was concerned about possible ghetto rioting and did not want to upset the police.

In his latest appearance before the commission, Kriegel told a different story. He said this time that he had never given the mayor more than a general idea of the cops' charges and did not provide him with specifics. Nor, said Kriegel, had he ever told Durk and Serpico that the mayor was concerned about bothering the police by acting on corruption. But the two policemen have stuck to their version.

Mr. Kriegel eventually escaped threats of a perjury indictment.

The Real Deal magazine hosted a forum at Lincoln Center on Tuesday evening about new development in New York City. The Real Estate, because of The Observer's usual late close, was not able to make the forum, though one wonders what more can possibly be said about new development now (It's happening! It's expensive! It takes forever sometimes! It involves Michael Shvo somehow!).

The forum's panel included heavies like Robert "Irrational Exhuberance" Shiller of Yale, City Planning Director Amanda Burden, Stephen Ross of the Related Companies (and chairman of the Real Estate Board of New York), downtown landlord Kent Swig, and Jonathan "Matrix" Miller, appraiser. (Full disclosure: This reporter used to work at The Real Deal.)

The Real Estate did make the forum's after-party, in a 10th-floor space at 165 West 65th Street, with a wonderful view of midtown as it slid into early spring slumber. We ran into Steve Cuozzo of the New York Post, who moderated the forum's panel, as he left. We also had a long talk with Braden Keil of the Post, and learned insights about the real-estate beat in New York we had thought were mere urban legend.

And finally, as we schmoozed about a party that felt like a prom for real estate (minus the bad clothes, but with the angst cranked to 11), we discovered the event served as a barometer for how addictive real-estate remains as a topic in this city.

"It says a lot for the real-estate market when you have nearly 3,000 people paying $30 to attend a forum to hear a panel on new development," said Amir Korangy, publisher of The Real Deal. "People are still very interested."

- Tom Acitelli

The Related Companies' chairman, Stephen Ross, said last week that the city will make an announcement "in the next 60 days" about a new housing program for middle-income New Yorkers, Crain's reports. Details of the announcement remain sketchy, but it likely has something to do with the construction of Queens West in Long Island City.

Mr. Ross is also chairman of the Real Estate Board of New York.

- Tom Acitelli

As previewed in today's Times, The Real Estate Board of New York announced today that Related's Stephen Ross will replace John Zucotti as its chairman, putting the kibosh on its earlier offer to Peter Kalikow. -Matthew Schuerman

Just how long will Lake Related stick around? The former site of the Houseman and Fairbanks theaters and other buildings on West 42nd Street has been left in a state of soggy indecision since the Department of City Planning blocked an attempt in February to get a zoning bonus by including Cirque du Soleil at the base of a proposed apartment tower.

In the meantime, something else happened: the property, owned by the well-connected Related Companies, was included in the Hudson Yards tax incentive district approved earlier this week. But to qualify for the tax break, the company would have to build commercial instead of residential.  read more »

The large glass panels are working their way up the skeleton of the AOL Time Warner Center, the mixe  read more »

On Sept.  read more »