Mort Zuckerman
Boston, Related Buy Big Development Rights for Eighth Avenue Office Building
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 »
Invisible Hand Shakes City REITs
On Sept. 19, a full six months after Wall Street began its catastrophic decline with the demise of Bear Stearns, and just four days after Lehman Brothers, New York real estate financier extraordinaire, collapsed, two publicly traded real estate companies rode high on the stock market, functioning, apparently, in an alternate universe.
That Friday, SL Green, New York City’s largest commercial property holder, traded at $73.75 a share. AvalonBay Communities, which has luxury residential developments downtown and in Long Island City, traded at a stunning 52-week high of $113.07.
They weren’t the only REITs defying the gravity of the situation. read more »
Boston Properties' 3Q Numbers: Zuckerman Focuses Long-Term
Mort Zuckerman's Boston Properties held its third-quarter investor call this morning. It was, as such events are these days, a somber affair. But, as far as REITS go, Boston Properties has so far capitalized on the unstable markets better than many, maintaining strong cash reserves and acquiring the GM Building and other distressed Macklowe properties just as the market started to dip.
Mr. Zuckerman expressed confidence that he wouldn't have to sell any of those assets, or even acquire joint venture partners.
"We sold a lot of buildings, as you know, almost $4.2 billion [of property] in the last half of 2006 and first half of 2007," Mr. Zuckerman said. "There isn't a building that we own at this stage of the game that we wouldn't want to hold for the longer term."
Yet, the firm has also suffered some setbacks, most notably its exposure to the collapse of Lehman and the demise of Heller Erhman, tenants at 399 Park Avenue and Times Square Tower, respectively. read more »
Zuckerman Rips Bailout, Defends GM Building Buy
Mort Zuckerman, the chairman of Boston Properties whose months-long economic doomsdaying was vindicated this September with the demise of Wall Street, has put on his prognosticator of prognosticator hat yet again, this time in an appearance on Intelligent Investing with Steve Forbes.
Here are some excerpts from the conversation (you can find the whole transcript here):
First off, Mr. Zuckerman thinks the $700 billion bailout sucks:
I don't believe that they should be doing it that way. I think they should be taking an equity position....Now, if [bankers, et.al.] can take up that much money on the way up they should take whatever the cost is on the way down. And it is not, it is absolutely a joke to say that their salaries are going to be constrained or their parachutes, golden parachutes, are going to be restricted.
Mort thinks John McCain blew a crazy good opportunity when he decided to support the bailout:
If John McCain had wanted to win the election, he could have sat there at that debate and said, 'This is an outrage. We should not be bailing out the very people who got us into the trouble. If we do anything, we should buy equity into the companies so that we can participate and let the shareholders pay.' If he had said that he would win the election.
Mort says the GM Building was a sweet deal, no matter what the critics say:
We were able to buy the General Motors building at a price that was roughly 20% below what it would have been the previous year. ... We have a very long-term view of these kinds of assets. We're at this stage, we bought that building with a minimum of a 5% yield that will go up every year. It's not the greatest yield, but virtually every, there was a huge gap between the current rents and the market rents. A huge gap. And so as these things rollover over time it will yield to us, in our judgment, the highest internal rate of return of any acquisition we have ever made or probably ever will make. So we think that's a wonderful asset. read more »
Speyer, Zuckerman Back Bloomberg Bid
Mega-landlords Jerry Speyer and Mort Zuckerman told The Times' Michael Barbaro they'd love to see a third Bloomberg term. It would help the local economy in troubling times, their reasoning goes--besides, what else would their friend Mike do with his time?
According to Mr. Zuckerman, chairman of Boston Properties, controlling owner of the GM Building, among other trophies: read more »
Writers, Editors, Friends Gather to Bid Farewell to Clay Felker
“He’s a one-off persona,” Daily News owner Mort Zuckerman told the Transom after Clay Felker’s memorial at the New York Society for Ethical Culture on Monday, Sept. 22. Mr. Zuckerman was hoofing it up four flights of stairs to a more intimate celebration for Mr. Felker on the fourth floor. “He’s the only person I would’ve walked up four flights for,” said Mr. Zuckerman, catching his breath.
Sir David Frost, acting as master of ceremonies, joked that if attendees wandered all the way to Elaine’s, they’d gone too far.
The guests at the public event were just the sort of high-low, insider-outsider, creator-enthusiast mix Mr. read more »
We Get Plucky With Tim Robbins at Lucky Premiere
Tim Robbins seemed a little worn out at the dinner following last night’s screening of his new film, The Lucky Ones.
“I don’t really feel like talking,” the actor said when we got alongside him early in the evening. “I just kind of want to relax with my friends and family.”
Being neither, the Daily Transom took our seat at the table adjacent to Robbins’s, where he sat with Mort Zuckerman and Bob Balaban and people we assumed were his family (Susan Sarandon was not present, unfortunately), looking relaxed.
Later, we spoke with an equally weary-looking Michael Pena, who acts alongside Mr. read more »
Zuckerman Bullish on Buying More Buildings
Mort Zuckerman and company provided their now typical dose of depressing market predictions this morning during Boston Properties' second quarter earnings call.
Our favorite bleak comment came from President Doug Linde, who, in speaking about the challenges facing the average American consumer, said, "We don't see any immediate catalyst for optimism."
Such artful use of business-speak!
Clearly someone's been spending too much time with Mr. Zuckerman, who has taken to using his public appearances to intone about the dire straits of the American economy (not that his statements are without merit. But sometimes, it's just so damned depressing!).
Anyway, there were some silver linings to the clouds darkening the economic horizon. read more »
Wood War Is Over (If You Want It)
Dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria ... and this! Tim Arango at The Times is reporting something that was probably once unfathomable but utterly plausible in today's bleak, sad newspaper climate: Rupert Murdoch and Mort Zuckerman are negotiating a plan to combine some back offices to ease operating costs for The New York Post and the Daily News.
He reports:
Lawyers for both newspapers are trying to find a structure for an agreement that would not require signing a Joint Operating Agreement — a mechanism other papers have used that would require creating a separate entity with a separate board and essentially mean merging all business functions while maintaining separate newsrooms. read more »
