TROPHY chaser Tishman Speyer Properties has had its sights set on the GM Building – and apparently is not the only company in the second round of bidding.
Our sources tell us that Mort Zuckerman‘s Boston Properties has been in the ring as well as Albert Behler‘s Paramount Group.
But at least one of those has now dropped out.
Last week, Larry Silverstein had to forego the chase when CalSTERS balked, and Joseph Cayre never made it to the second round when he didn’t want to raise his bid to $3 billion.
To say that no one is talking about this is an understatement. There are no comments on the no comments. The good news is that if the credit crunch eases, everyone can get financing – including the Macklowes, who would dearly love to hang onto the white marble edifice.
Meanwhile, we also hear that Sheldon Solow has also dropped his most recently filed state lawsuit, which claimed the current deed is bogus.
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There is trepidation by the real estate community about the direction in which Lt. Gov. David Patterson will take the state, in the event of the possible resignation of Gov. Eliot Spitzer. Obviously, losing a governor who they watched grow up as the son of another real estate mogul, Bernard Spitzer, has hit hard, along with their concern for the Spitzer family.
Steven Spinola, president of the Real Estate Board of New York, told us at yesterday’s Hilton luncheon that if Patterson decides to stop everything and reexamine all the projects, it would not be good for the city.
A decision on the winner for the Hudson Yards project, for instance, is to come soon, and the industry wants the Moynihan Train Station project pushed forward, which Gov. Spitzer was busy wrangling. On the other hand, if he can find the funds, Patterson could, for instance, resurrect the Javits Convention Center expansion in Manhattan – although it’s not the top of the agenda.
Speakers like Silverstein, Bill Rudin and John Zuccotti, were gung-ho on Downtown and the progress that has been made.
Joseph Moinian said he is turning 95 Wall St. into a rental building and has just hired wacky French designer Philippe Starck to oversee the 507 apartments. Moinian says they will be ready in 60 days.
Starck is well known as a quirky and futuristic designer. He was the go-to guy for Ian Schrager for many years, where he started by working on the rooms for the Paramount Hotel – designing everything including toilets which we recently found in model apartments in Dubai. A few years ago, Starck worked with the Yoo Group on Boymelgreen’s 15 Broad St. condominium, where he put an tique poison bottles in the bathrooms and ran to pose for us under a lampshade. Those buying units at 15 Broad St. were also able to choose furniture from a catalog developed from the model apartments.
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Brooklyn-based Muss Development bought 64 W. 48th St. cater-corner to the Rock Center promenade for $54.4 million last week.
Diane and Harold Siegel of Norman Bobrow & Co. were the marketers for Western Management, which picked it up for $24 million in 2006.
Right now, the building tenants are mostly geared to light manufacturing so Jason Muss, a principal with the family company, says they will reposition the 17-story wedding-cake building into a Class A property through a capital improvement program and the completion of a lobby renovation. New common areas, windows and upgraded elevator cabs, façade, roof and HVAC are also on the way for the 130,000 feet.
Mark Lauzon of Cushman & Wakefield will be the agent for the building, which will have asking rents in the low- to mid-$60s a foot.
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At yesterday’s luncheon, REBNY bestowed its Most Promising Commercial Broker of the Year award on Peter Schubert, senior director of sales for Massey Knakal Realty Services. Schubert, who specializes in Bedford Stuyvesant, confessed he was doubly nervous.
That’s because he’d just come from the hospital where his wife gave birth to a baby boy that morning. “I told her to hurry up because I had a luncheon to go to,” he said to laughter and applause from the packed ballroom. [email protected]
