From old to new, the year has brought out the best and worst of the real estate industry as they traded in and out of city bricks.
But above all, the newest projects are raising the roofs, adding a new layer of height to the Big Apple skyline.
So here are my annual Golden Brick awards:
- Toothpick Award: To Harry Macklowe and CIM for the slenderest and tallest tower at 432 Park Ave. that has taken over the northern sky. We still have our digits crossed hoping for more oomph at the top.
- What is Old is New Award: To Larry Silverstein and architect Robert A.M. Stern for the limestone design of 30 Park Place that resembles the Ralph Walker-designed Art Deco limestone office tower at One Wall St. that was purchased for $585 million through CBRE and will also be transformed into luxury condos, rentals and a 350,000-square-foot swath of retail by Harry Macklowe.
- 5&10 Award: To Ken Horn’s Alchemy Properties for the rebirth of the top of the Woolworth Building as a luxury condominium.
- Billion-Dollar Dominator Award: To investment broker Douglas Harmon of Eastdil Secured, who this year, along with Adam Spies, marketed 50 city buildings that traded for $19 billion. This equated to roughly 75 percent of the 76 buildings that sold for $20 million or more and just over half the entire $29.2 billion in trophy sales. Five sold for over $1 billion each. The HarMON-ey Man total does not include pending deals for the Waldorf Astoria, for $1.95 billion, 1095 Sixth, for $2.25 billion, an interest in 1345 Sixth, and the Crown Building at 730 Fifth, for just over $1.75 billion.
- Crown King Award: To Jeff Sutton for swooping in to seal a deal for the Crown Building with Sandeep Manthrani’s GGP for a record per-square-foot price — and this year for buying retail portions of 34th St., Times Square, Soho and elsewhere for his growing portfolio.
- Biggest LEDs Award: To Steve Roth’s Vornado Realty Trust for the ginormous sign just unveiled at 1535 Broadway in Times Square, which was bought from Clean Channel last year for $19,291,789. Another $213.2 million in payments to the Marriott Marquis includes the 45,000 square feet now being marketed to retailers.
– Trade Twist Award: To Gary Barnett of Extell Development, who traded his site at Hudson Yards at 34th Street and 11th Avenue to Stephen Ross’s Related Cos. in return for 740 Eighth Ave. and West 45th Street, where Barnett had already tied up pieces of the site.
- Rocky Award: To RXR for its upcoming renovation and exterior washing of 75 Rockefeller Center that will complement the cleaned up St. Patrick’s down the block.
- Retail Tiara Award: To Crown Acquisitions for buying the St. Regis retail with Vornado and 450 Park with Oxford Properties.
- High Line Iron Impact Award: To Taconic and Joe Sitt for actually building Morris Adjmi’s suspended greenhouse at 837 Washington St. and leasing it all to Samsung.
– It Building Award: To the Sapir Organization and CIM Group as 11 Madison Ave. leased up its top floors overlooking Madison Square Park to Sony, William Morris Endeavor and Yelp.
- Jumbo DUMBO Deal Award: To Jared Kushner’s Kushner Cos., Aby Rosen’s RFR Holdings, and Invesco for buying and converting the former Jehovah’s Witnesses facility north of Dumbo into desirable tech offices and signing the creative Web site Etsy to 200,000 square feet.
- Fall Guy Award: To Nicholas Schorsch, who resigned from 13 companies sponsored by AR Capital after accounting errors made by an executive were not corrected at American Realty Capital Properties.
– Office Doyenne Award: To Leslie Himmel, who remains the only female office building owner and who, along with her co-principal of Himmel + Meringoff Properties Stephen Meringoff, is now repositioning 1460 Broadway in Times Square together with Swig Equities.
- Boro King Award: To Queens for becoming the new residential development outpost.
- End Run Award: To Steve Roth of Vornado for snagging Amazon for a 400,000-square-foot lease at 7 W. 34th St., even as Durst had a lease out with the Web retailing giant for 1133 Sixth.
- Qatar & Run Award: To Qatar, which was to buy a townhouse on East 64th Street for roughly $90 million from the Wildensteins — but flaked out. The Wildensteins have since leased their adjacent townhouses at 740 Madison to Bottega Veneta. The retailer has already moved out of 23 E. 67th, which is now for sale for $40 million through Adelaide Polsinelli and Ety Lee of Eastern Consolidated.
- Shrink Wrap Award: To Douglas Durst for allowing KiDS Creative, the branding offshoot of Box Studios, to wither from 37,500 square feet on the 87th floor of One World Trade Center at a rent of over $90 a foot, or $3.375 million per year, to a mere 2,400-square-foot pre-built on the 47th floor, where rents are $75 per foot or $180,000 per year. This new five-year deal is on a future expansion floor for Condé Nast. KiDS founder, the branding and photo wizard Pascal Dangin, said in a statement Tuesday their “business model changed.”
“We wanted to keep him in the building and are hopeful that when he is able to expand he will take more space at One World Trade Center,” a Durst spokesman added.
