The city’s tentative property-tax roll for the fiscal year beginning July 1 was supposed to be released yesterday but was delayed by a computer glitch.
Some assessments showed up online for about an hour before the gremlins set in.
“Production is taking longer than anticipated,” Owen Stone, a spokesman for the city’s Department of Finance, said in an e-mail. “We won’t have the roll posted tonight.”
Owners are eagerly awaiting the roll’s release so they can start figuring out their property taxes for the July bill or file an application by March 1 (March 15 for homeowners) to request a reduction in the assessed value.
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Fashion discounter Century 21 may be taking over the top of the new CityPoint project on Fulton Street in Brooklyn with a dramatic 100,000-square-foot spread.
The project is being developed by Arcadia Development, which already has a signed deal with Target to occupy about 50,000 square feet. According to sources, a lease has been sent to Century 21, which had been pounding availabilities in the neighborhood.
Area brokers say asking rents have been around $225 on the ground and about $100 a foot on the upper floors, making the Century 21 deal worth about $4 million a year.
Neither Arcadia nor Century 21 returned calls or e-mails for comment.
Last year, Century 21 signed an expansion plan for its flagship store opposite the World Trade Center that will grow it to about 200,000 square feet. It also took over a 61,000-square-foot former Barnes & Noble space on the Upper West Side.
The retailer has other stores in Brooklyn, Queens, Long Island and New Jersey.
Now if they would just pop themselves into Westchester at the vacated Syms store on Tarrytown Rd. in Elmsford, I’d be a happier camper.
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Blackstone quietly closed on a participating loan that represents a 25 percent stake in 2 World Financial Center, where Bank of America just renewed its presence with a 342,845-square-foot lease through Jones Lang LaSalle.
Brookfield Financial owns and manages the building along with others in the World Financial Center complex, which is currently undergoing renovations.
However, it’s facing leasing challenges as BofA is giving up 159,000 square feet, while Nomura is moving out of 900,000 square feet between 2 and 4 WFC.
The Blackstone investment would revalue the 2.7 million-square-foot 2 WFC to at least $300 a foot, making it worth about $800 million, “which is miles below replacement cost,” observed one investment broker, who was not familiar with the deal. “Even if they have to incur another $100 a foot in leasing and improvement costs, they would be below replacement.”
A spokesman for Blackstone declined comment, as did a spokeswoman for Brookfield.
Blackstone, which has been making larger bets on city offices, already owns the offices at 1095 Ave. of the Americas, 1140 Ave of the Americas, 717 Fifth Ave. and 1411 Broadway. Last year it bought the vacant offices at the Times Building, which will be targeted toward media and entertainment companies.
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Turning to Queens, New York Life Insurance Company has signed a 10-year lease for the entire fourth floor of 25,000 square feet at the LeFrak Organization’s 95-25 Queens Blvd. in Rego Park. The 11-story building has 300,000 square feet rented to a variety of financial and health tenants.
Employees now located in Lake Success, LI, will be able to drive instead to the new location’s on-site parking later this spring.
Mitti Liebersohn, now with Jones Lang Salle, represented the insurance company in a deal he started negotiating while with Cushman & Wakefield. Roy Chipkin of CBRE represented LeFrak, which had rents in the $30-per-foot range.
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The Harlem River Academy has obtained bankruptcy court approval to buy the former Rice School building in Harlem for $13 million. Newmark Knight Frank’s Jimmy Kuhn and Jennifer Schwartzman have been handling the sale for the court and declined comment. The high school was known for incubating basketball stars.
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Newmark Knight Frank’s new parent, BCG, led by Howard Lutnick, is making moves to add Grubb & Ellis to its fold now that an exclusivity agreement with Andrew Farkas’ C-111 and Colony Capital has expired.
According to The Real Deal, a G&E regulatory filing yesterday revealed the brokerage entered into an exclusivity agreement with BCG giving it until Jan. 31 to pursue financing or a “strategic transaction.”
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An 11-building Brooklyn portfolio, Park & Coast, was sold for $120 million by Privet Investments to a private investor through Paul Leibowitz in Darcy Stacom’s group at CBRE.
The per-unit price equates to $150,000 for each of the 820 apartments. The buildings, including 855 Ocean Ave., are located near either Prospect Park or close to the water in Brighton Beach, Crown Heights or Sheepshead Bay.
