Lower Manhattan

Brookfield Properties, Merrill Lynch's landlord at the World Financial Center in Lower Manhattan, took a beating yesterday in public trading. According to the Wall Street Journal, Brookfield's stock plummeted 18 percent to $17.40 a share by 4 p.m. Monday.

The Journal this morning details Larry Silverstein's moneyman at the World Trade Center site--the low-key but fabulously wealthy Lloyd Goldman. Mr. Goldman's uncle Sol by the mid-1970s was the biggest private landlord in the city, and the family fortune survives today in nationwide investments.

Mr. Goldman got in on the World Trade Center in early 2001, backing Mr. Silverstein's takeover of the towers shortly before September 11, and now, of course, holds a major hand in the redevelopment. Mr. Goldman, in fact, will likely some day take control of whatever Mr. Silverstein ultimately builds on the site (rather than, say, Mr. Silverstein's two daughters).

Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver, a powerful voice in the redevelopment of downtown, wants the Lower Manhattan Development Corporation to stay in business, according to his spokesman.

That puts him at odds with Mayor Bloomberg, who today called in an op-ed for Governor Paterson to disband the agency, which has divvied up much of the federal money that went to Lower Manhattan following the attacks of September 11, 2001.

Dan Weiller, a spokesman for Mr. Silver, who has previously expressed support for LMDC chairman Avi Schick, had this to say this afternoon:

"Speaker Silver said that he welcomes the sense of urgency that the mayor has expressed regarding progress at ground zero.  read more »

On the day prior to the seventh anniversary of New York’s darkest moment, Mayor Bloomberg penned an impassioned plea in the Wall Street Journal calling for more accountability and action at the terminally delayed World Trade Center site.

Commendable as the op-ed was, it’s possible that the mayor engaged in a bit of hyperbole to make his case. The offending passage:

Today, Lower Manhattan is the fastest-growing residential neighborhood in the country, bustling morning, noon and night. But the rebirth of Lower Manhattan will not be complete as long as Ground Zero remains an open wound.

But is the growth part true? No doubt Mr.  read more »

I wrote in this week's print edition of The Observer on whether 2008 would be as strong a year as 2007 for investment sales. Long story short: Not likely, because of the credit crunch. Also, 2007 set a remarkable benchmark, one perhaps best-illustrated by investment sales in Lower Manhattan.  read more »

About 1,000 pounds of confetti will be delivered at 4 p.m. today to the garage of the Alliance for Downtown New York, to be used tomorrow to shower the Super Bowl champion New York Giants. The Alliance will deliver the confetti to Lower Manhattan office buildings Tuesday morning, according to a couple of emails I've gotten in the last half-hour from a Downtown Alliance rep.

The confetti is recycled packaging paper cut into approximately 10-inch strips and is being provided by the Atlas Material Company in Red Hook.  read more »

The New York Giants will be honored soon with a new plaque in Lower Manhattan's Canyon of Heroes. The plaque, installed by the Alliance for Downtown New York, will join the 203 already embedded in the sidewalk along Broadway, from the Battery to City Hall. The plaques mark the ticker-tape parades that have traveled up (or, occassionally, down) the route.

The first ticker-tape parade was a spontaneous one marking the arrival of the Statue of Liberty in 1886. The last one, before tomorrow's scheduled parade for the Giants, was for the World Series-winning Yankees in October 2000.

We got an email from Silverstein Properties early this morning. Developer Larry Silverstein will unveil this coming Tuesday Robert A.M. Stern's design for the condo-hotel project at 99 Church Street in Lower Manhattan. The unveiling will come as part of a breakfast presentation hosted by the Alliance for Downtown New York.

The Church Street project will rise 66 stories and include 175 luxury hotel rooms and 143 condos. Mr.  read more »

Crain's reports that Goldman Sachs has extended its lease of 517,000 square feet at Brookfield Properties' One New York Plaza for 15 months as it awaits the completion of its new headquarters on West Street in Lower Manhattan. The headquarters is supposed to be done by late 2009.

Lower Manhattan could still keep its hold on financial giant Merrill Lynch, the Wall Street Journal reports today (at bottom), as “Downtown forces” recently went back to the bank with a revised package.

Just weeks ago, Merrill was very close to moving its headquarters to the site of Vornado Realty Trust’s Hotel Pennsylvania in midtown, just across Seventh Avenue from Penn Station. However, the move never came up at a meeting of the financial firm’s board, the Journal reports, which was too preoccupied with a write-down of $8.4 billion.

Since then, Merrill CEO Stanley O’Neal went into retirement – chief executives tend to weigh in heavily in a company’s location decision, real estate experts say – leaving open once again the question of where the bank will go when its lease at Brookfield Properties’ World Financial Center, just west of Ground Zero, expires in 2013.

Brookfield is pushing to expand its existing facility to accommodate Merrill, while Larry Silverstein is eager to bring the bank to one of his new World Trade Center towers.

Advertising and marketing giant Omnicom Group has agreed to lease between 100,000 and 200,000 square feet at L&L Holding Company's 195 Broadway, according to sources familiar with the deal. The lease is part of an expansion by Omnicom, which is based in 437 Madison Avenue.  read more »

Time Equities has applied for a building permit for a 65-story glass condo tower at 50 West Street, city records show. The luxury hotel and condo building would be completed in 2010.

The Helmut Jahn-designed tower, which the permit application puts at 714 feet, would have 305 condos atop 15 stories of a 150-room luxury hotel, according to project director Dermot Johnson.  read more »

You know those little turquoise boxes from Tiffany’s, the ones with a big white bow? Apparently, they are among the great icons of the world—up there, I suppose, with the pyramids, the Great Wall of China and the Eiffel Tower. At least, that’s what Deputy Mayor Daniel Doctoroff said at Wednesday's grand opening of the new Tiffany & Co. store on Wall Street.

“So many of us have enjoyed Tiffany products in our lives,” Mr. Doctoroff gushed.

I’m not sure his words registered with the coffee-cart vendors whom Tiffany’s had contracted to display turquoise umbrellas and give out free coffee (in turquoise paper cups) and cookies, but Mr. Doctoroff was probably right about most of the hundred or so well-heeled tourists and Wall Street types who came to watch the ribbon-cutting and partake of free breakfast and gift bags.  read more »

This stat might surprise you:

The average salary in lower Manhattan now is more than $115,000, and about $550 million is spent there annually by employees of businesses below Chambers Street.

These numbers come from business-booster group Alliance for Downtown New York’s recently released Lower Manhattan Retail Market Overview. The report looks at trends in the business, residential and visitor markets.  read more »

Robert Harvey has been named interim executive director of the Lower Manhattan Construction Command Center. He succeeds Charles Maikish. Mr. Harvey was deputy executive director of the command center's capital planning and construction.  read more »

It’s the biggest sale in downtown history.

The Paramount Group has purchased 60 Wall Street from Deutsche Bank for $1.2 billion. The 47-story, 1.6-million-square-foot building sold for a jaw-dropping $750 per square foot, by far and away a new benchmark for lower Manhattan. The sale price is nearly double the $610 million Deutsche Bank paid for the building in 2001.  read more »

Lower Manhattan’s apartment inventory rose 19 percent in the last two years, according to a new report. In 2006, 12 fresh residential developments spilled 1,718 new apartments onto the market below Chambers Street, according to the report from the Alliance for Downtown New York, a business-booster group.  read more »