Larry Silverstein

Here was World Trade Center site developer Larry Silverstein at a forum hosted by NYU last week:

The time frames have changed, they are delayed by virtue of the Port Authority being able to deliver in a timely fashion, it will get there and they will deliver ultimately. But the timing for the development and the building of those building is going to be set back a few years, which under the circumstances, is not the end of the world.

Mr. Silverstein was talking about delays at the trade center site, and, as Real Estate Weekly's Dan Geiger ably points out, "Silverstein for one of the first times publicly conceded that he was glad the construction would likely be delayed."  read more »

From The Real Deal: "Less than two months after HSBC backed out of a massive lease agreement at 7 World Trade Center, Silverstein Properties has reached a tentative agreement on a new lease with German lender WestLB, sources familiar with the discussions said. WestLB, a leading German financial institution, has agreed to relocate to the Lower Manhattan building with a 129,000-square-foot lease on the 50 to 52nd floors. Asking rents at the 1.7-million-square-foot tower range from $75 to $85 a square foot for the top two floors."

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).

The gaudy peacock, the male of the peafowl species, frequently attracts and then mates with a seraglio of adoring peahens.

Similarly, NBC Universal, media giant of the peacock logo, has attracted a harem of brokers, all hoping to score the big deal that will garner the conglomerate more than 600,000 square feet in Manhattan, and garner the broker a sizable nest egg. “NBC is the 800-pound peacock in the market,” laughed one real estate insider.

But while the dazzling cock can satisfy multiple hens, NBC Universal can satisfy only one. It is, therefore, a very eligible bachelor.

 read more »

HSBC employees should soon, from their aerie atop 7 World Trade Center, be able to peer down at the morass of construction at the city-and-state controlled ground zero below.

The massive bank is poised to become landlord Larry Silverstein’s newest tenant at 7 World Trade. Now that HSBC has a lease pending on the 52-story tower’s top seven floors—comprising 280,000 square feet of the tower’s 1.7 million—7 World Trade is nearly full.

A knowledgeable source told us that a lease is indeed “out,” as commercial real estate’s insufferable jargon would have it, meaning that a lease exists, HSBC has a copy and its execs are eyeing the dotted line.  read more »

HSBC Bank is poised to become Larry Silverstein's newest tenant at 7 World Trade Center, with a lease pending on the last big block of space in the 52-story, 741-foot, two-year-old skyscraper on the edge of Ground Zero.

The banking giant has a lease out on 280,000 square feet of space comprising the top seven floors of the building, according to a knowledgeable source. While the lease has yet to be signed, insiders believe it's nearly a done deal. (We guess that means no more penthouse parties for the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue.)

Read more about the pending deal in Wednesday's print Observer.

The number of firms looking for at least 150,000 square feet in Manhattan, and the number of buildings that can accommodate them, could more or less now each be counted on one hand. Some contend that the number continues to shrink as the economy worsens. Other’s say there’s always a small universe of big players. Either way, brokers say they find themselves chasing after the same few lookers again and again.

The belle of this dreary ball is probably NBC Universal, which is looking for a place to house its new consolidated business operations center, which will include offices for chief executives like Jeff Zucker; a child-care facility; a conference center; a health care and fitness center; and an employee commissary.

And so when Lynn Calpeter, NBC Universal’s chief financial officer, visited Silverstein Properties’ 7 World Trade Center this month, tongues started wagging, particularly since she’s part of a caravan of muckety-mucks that has passed through the angular tower in recent weeks. Even Mr. Zucker, the president and CEO of NBC Universal, has stopped by.  read more »

NBC visited 7 World Trade Center on June 2, the most recent of more than one visit to Larry Silverstein’s gleaming downtown tower, whose top 10 floors are still available for lease. Sources say NBC was considering housing its new business operations center there.

“NBC has been back to 7 World Trade Center a number of times, with executives and different division heads poring over the building,” said a real estate insider, who, on a recent visit to the building, saw NBC representatives looking like “cats who swallowed the canary.”

Those “executives” included Jeff Zucker, the president and CEO of NBC Universal, according to another source.

A Silverstein spokesman said he would “not comment on nor confirm discussions with potential tenants.” But another broker familiar with NBC’s plans said the media giant has since moved on from 7 World Trade, and is now looking at SJP Properties’ under-construction 11 Times Square and properties along Eighth Avenue.  read more »

The Port Authority today acknowledged that it will be late in delivering a key portion of the World Trade Center site to developer Larry Silverstein, owing him millions in penalties.

The bi-state agency said it will take until August to turn over the site for Tower 2, a space being excavated that it is obligated to turn over by July 1. The Port Authority will owe Mr. Silverstein $300,000 a day for each day that the site is late, the same penalty it faced when it missed a Jan. 1 deadline for the site for Towers 3 and 4, eventually owing more than $12 million.

In a statement, the Port Authority noted that the agency will now not be paying an incentive of between $8 million and $14 million that it was prepared to pay its contractors had they finished on time.  read more »

The Wall Street Journal reports today that Merrill Lynch is in talks once again to move its headquarters to one of Larry Silverstein’s towers at the World Trade Center site, with the Port Authority, which owns the site, expected to discuss the matter at today’s board meeting.  read more »

Fifteen minutes ago was the deadline for developers to bid on one of Manhattan's prime trophy properties -- 1301 Avenue of the Americas, also known as the Credit Lyonnais Building, at the corner of 52nd Street.

The cloud-buster is one of the seven so-called "Equity Portfolio" properties that beleaguered mogul Harry Macklowe bought last year for $7 billion (in those bubbly days, he only had to put down $50 million of his own money).  read more »

Yesterday morning we took a little jaunt downtown to check out the progress of the Freedom Tower. Accompanied by some folks from the Port Authority, which is developing the tower, we took a few shots from the construction site. Work is slated to rise above street level later this year.

For now, the sub-grade work seems to have a whole lot of workers installing a whole lot of cement and rebar. The site was mostly empty and the vast majority of the work has come within the last year. The Port Authority said they still are on schedule for completion in 2012.  read more »

Developer Harry Macklowe’s descent from the pinnacle of Manhattan real estate will continue apace April 30, the day bids are due for several of the seven Manhattan towers he bought so spectacularly in February 2007.

Those readying bids for the cloud-busters include many of the same developers who circled Mr.  read more »

Governor Paterson indicated he would re-examine the rebuilding effort at the World Trade Center site, where the billions of dollars of projects faced years of delays before moving into the construction phase in the past year and a half.

“We have to go back and revisit the issue at Ground Zero,” Mr. Paterson said at a breakfast this morning hosted by the Association for a Better New York. “As we stand right now, it will be September 11 of 2011 before anything is actually built, and estimates are that that may be two or three years off. We can do better than that, because Ground Zero should always be a symbol of our resilience and an engine of our downtown economy.”

The implications of this statement--and what it means to "revisit" the issues there--are not entirely clear as construction on the Freedom Tower’s foundation is already well underway (we bumped into its architect, David Childs, this afternoon, who said construction is going well), as is sub-grade work on the PATH station, and the memorial. Developer Larry Silverstein recently started early work on two of his three towers for the site, too.  read more »

“Wow, look at the mist,” murmured Sarah Craig, a Vassar College freshman, as she and 60 other students walked onto the 52nd floor of Seven World Trade Center, developer Larry Silverstein’s glamorous office skyscraper that, this rainy afternoon, pierced the clouds.

Thanks to the top 10 floors still being up for lease, the penthouse hosts a lot of visitors — Mr. Silverstein’s publicist and his staff lead four to five tours a week — and lots of glamorous parties.

On Feb. 12, the starkly gorgeous concrete-and-glass space hosted babealicious swimsuit models celebrating the release of the 2008 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue (the models traded their bikinis for cocktail dresses for a party that Silverstein Properties spokesman Dara McQuillan said was fabulous).

Of course, the Vassar students weren’t there to chat about star-studded fetes. The three classes — Intro to Urban Studies, Urban Geography and Architecture of the Modern World — had bussed in from Poughkeepsie and spent the day touring Chase Plaza and the perimeter of Ground Zero.  read more »

Seven weeks after he had hoped to start construction, Larry Silverstein is ready to build at Ground Zero, as the Port Authority announced today it has finished excavations and cleared space for World Trade Center Towers 3 and 4.

The Port Authority missed its deadline of Jan. 1 to turn over the site to Silverstein Properties, and has owed $300,000 a day to the developer since, an amount that now exceeds $14 million. However, the cost is offset some, as the agency has said it offered a $10 million incentive to its contractors to finish before the deadline.

Completion of the towers is expected for 2011.  read more »

If there ever was any doubt, now it’s clear: Larry Silverstein has a taste for tall buildings downtown.  read more »

Developer Larry Silverstein publicly professed his love for Harry Macklowe’s GM Building today, though was mum on whether he is interested in buying a stake—or all—of Mr. Macklowe’s prized tower at 767 Fifth Avenue.

“I think the General Motors building is perhaps one of New York’s finest buildings—it’s a gem, it’s a trophy,” he told a gaggle of reporters at this morning’s Downtown Alliance breakfast.  read more »

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 »

With the Port Authority’s announcement on Monday that it is facing four to six weeks of delays at Ground Zero, it seems Larry Silverstein will have to wait a few more weeks before his test begins.  read more »

Paramount Group’s sale of 1177 Avenue of the Americas to Larry Silverstein and CalSTRS pension fund just popped up on city records, and the final tally: $1,000,850,706.

We reported in November about the sale, and then Silverstein Properties put out a release earlier this month acknowledging that the deal was indeed for over $1 billion.

Almost as if to say, “Really—we aren’t upset,” Silverstein Properties has issued an addendum to its earlier statement on the Port Authority’s excavation delays for Towers 3 and 4 at the World Trade Center site, showering even more praise on the Port Authority.  read more »

The Port Authority acknowledged today that it will miss its deadline of Jan. 1, 2008 to finish up excavations on the bathtub for World Trade Center Towers 3 and 4, thereby owing developer Larry Silverstein more than $12 million in delay penalties given the agency’s current timeline.

The Port Authority will owe Silverstein Properties $300,000 for every day until the excavations are done, and in a statement, the agency said that the bathtub would be ready for complete handover to Mr. Silverstein in about two to four weeks after mid-January (when they expect to finish excavations for Tower 4).

The Port Authority, which owns the World Trade Center site and is leasing the land for Towers 2, 3, and 4 to Silverstein, said in the statement that the hit from the penalties will in part be passed along to its contractors.

Silverstein, in a statement, said it will begin “pre-construction activities” as the firm waits on the Port.

Release after the jump.

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Larry Silverstein's firm announced on Thursday that it had bought 1177 Avenue of the Americas for over $1 billion. Silverstein properties partnered with the California State Teachers’ Retirement System, and the joint venture bought the midtown tower from Paramount Group.

The Observer broke the news of the deal last month. It's the third big purchase Mr. Silverstein has made with CalSTRS.

Thirty-one down, 11 to go.  read more »

What credit crunch? King of Downtown wins bid for midtown’s 1177 Avenue of the Americas.  read more »

Larry Silverstein is going big in midtown, as the Paramount Group has agreed to sell its tower at 1177 Avenue of the Americas to Silverstein Properties and the California-based CalSTRS pension fund for more than $1 billion, a source confirmed today.  read more »

The contracts for the foundations of two World Trade Center towers have been awarded, Silverstein Properties announced today, as developer Larry Silverstein revs his engines before taking control of the site at the start of next year.

The contracts, totaling about $40 million, are fairly minimal given the approximately $7 billion cost of the three Silverstein towers on the site, though the contracts mark one of the first construction-related actions by Mr. Silverstein.

Press release after the jump.  read more »

Here we go: writing an article about an article about an article, but we cannot resist because the subject of that last “article” is Larry Silverstein—who is, according to a Columbia Journalism Review blog post, the media’s favorite developer.  read more »

The publisher of The American Lawyer and The National Law Journal will move its headquarters from midtown south to Larry Silverstein's 120 Broadway in lower Manhattan. ALM will occupy the fifth and sixth floors, totaling about 90,000 square feet, according to Silverstein Properties. The lease is for 10 years.

The Observer earlier covered non-financial services firms moving to lower Manhattan. And we covered a major lease renewal at 120 Broadway.

Roger Silverstein represented Silverstein Properties in the ALM lease. And Michael Cohen and Leon Manoff of GVA Williams represented the tenant.

The NCR Corporation is leasing a floor at 7 World Trade Center, the first of Larry Silverstein’s buildings at Ground Zero, bringing the occupancy rate up to 74 percent. The rent is said to be somewhere around $70 a square foot annually—an aggressive rate even for a booming downtown.

Governor Spitzer announced the deal this morning. Press release after the jump.

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Architect Robert A.M. Stern is coming to the financial district.

Larry Silverstein announced this morning that Mr. Stern will design 99 Church Street, his new luxury condo and residential project downtown.

Mr. Stern, the architect who designed the widely acclaimed Fifteen Central Park West, is a major coup for Mr. Silverstein who recently announced that 99 Church -- formerly an 11-story office tower -- would be razed to put up a new luxury tower. Construction is expected to be finished by 2011.

Release after the jump.  read more »

Crain's reports (via The Real Deal) that the law firm Kostelanetz and Fink has taken an eight-year lease for 14,000 square feet at Larry Silverstein's Seven World Trade Center. By our count, that brings the 1.7-million-square-foot tower to just over 72 percent full. There's a lot of space left, some of it in sizable chunks of over 30,000 feet. Get it while it's less than $100 a foot!

Larry Silverstein was on Nightline last night. The ABC News program depicted the World Trade Center developer as a striding, fast-talking, somewhat stubborn visionary "right out of central casting" who was "always, always selling." A pop-up video of the segment can be seen here.  

Silverstein project gets Greenwich Street address, as Trade Centers rise.  read more »

Anticipating the type of questions that arise this time of year, developer Larry Silverstein held a press conference today to assure everybody that rebuilding at the World Trade Center site continued on track, that shovels will go into the ground for his three towers in January, and that they would open in 2012.

If that’s not news, the 200-odd media people who turned out, many from national and international news outfits that cover developments like this from a distance, will try to believe really hard that it is. Instead of starchitects Richard Rogers, Sir Norman Foster and Fumihiko Maki, who attended last year’s unveiling of the actual designs, senior staff people from each of the three firms gave updates.

Yet the renderings looked remarkably the same, aside from a few details at street level.  read more »

JPMorgan Chase’s new skyscraper vindicates Silverstein’s downtown vision, but hold the applause—he’s still got his own towers to fill.  read more »

Larry Silverstein thinks JP Morgan Chase’s decision to move downtown is “tremendous.”

His full statement: “JPMorgan Chase is a tremendous addition to the new Downtown. Like the Goldman Sachs headquarters and the speedy lease-up of 7 World Trade Center, it proves again that Downtown has re-emerged as the financial capital of the world.”

Two months of negotiations by the Spitzer administration (and by Gov. Spitzer himself, who reportedly called in around 2 or 3 p.m. yesterday with advice of his own to help wrap things up) led to today’s $2 billion settlement of the outstanding insurance claims on the old World Trade Center.  read more »

Larry Silverstein has filled two-thirds of 7 World Trade Center. Silverstein Properties announced on Tuesday that DRW Trading has leased 8,568 square feet on the 34th floor. The company should be moved in by August.

Also, Silverstein Properties announces Moody's will take an extra 80,000 square feet in addition to the 590,000 they already signed on for. Steve Cuozzo of The Post reported that one a few weeks ago.

That means 1.1 million square feet is taken and roughly another 500,000 to go for the city's most valuable downtown office building.

Full-release after the jump.  read more »

- John Koblin

It’s the most lucrative era in the history of the city’s commercial real-estate market:  read more »

After months of speculation, Larry Silverstein has finally decided to convert 99 Church into a hotel-condo. The Real Deal has the scoop late this afternoon. Silverstein will build a 60-story mega-hotel-condo, with the first 20 floors turning into a ritzy hotel and the rest of the tower going residential.

Lauren Elkies quotes Lisa Silverstein, Larry's daughter and Vice President of Silverstein Properties, saying the site makes sense as condo since "there's zero competition."

"I realized there are just no grand Park Avenue apartments downtown, and I'd like to create that," Ms. Silverstein said.

So with Larry jumping on board--and Joseph Moinian building a W Hotel on Washington Street--is the swanky hotel the big new trend downtown? Who else is going to follow suit?

- John Koblin

Jeffrey Levine, the president of Douglaston Development and an influential real-estate developer, is resisting the cap that the state financing agency has placed on tax-exempt bonds for mixed-income apartment buildings.

Mr. Levine is one of two developers who received permission to use tax-exempt financing in the waning days of the Pataki administration. (The other one was Larry Silverstein.) Shortly after Governor Spitzer took over in January, the state Housing Finance Agency froze those projects and nine others that had not gotten so far because it did not have authority to issue that much tax-exempt financing.  read more »

This week, as The Observer reported, HFA President and Chief Executive Priscilla Almodovar sent a letter to all applicants--including Mr. Levine and Mr. Silverstein--asking them to revise their applications for tax-exempt financing by March 16, limiting their requests to $1.5 million per affordable unit that they build.

Larry Silverstein, Tom Elghanayan, Jeff Levine, William Dickey and Steve Witkoff are staring a new monster in the face: the end of cheap financing that was supposed to help them settle Manhattan's wild West Side.

These five real estate developers thought they had it made last year when the state Housing Finance Agency approved their applications for tax-exempt bonds. But the incoming Spitzer administration noticed something funny: the rental boom was eating up all of the state's available bond volume. So, the administration froze the financing.  read more »

Counting several other projects at earlier stages of the approval process, the HFA has $4.8 billion worth of applications for tax-exempt bonds pending; it only expects to be able to dole out $590 million this year.

Larry Silverstein wants to add a 12-story, 83-unit, low-income rental building on West 42nd Street that will let him add an extra 10 stories or so on his planned River Place II next-door.

The low-income building, for households earning 80 percent of the area median income, gives Mr. Silverstein a 20 percent zoning bonus, enabling two 57-story towers at 600 West 42nd Street. The affordable-housing building comes in addition to 235 low-income units proposed for the high-rise towers, which will make Mr. Silverstein eligible for cheap state financing and another zoning bonus that he can then sell to other developers nearby.

Community Board 4, however, has asked the city to block the zoning bonus in large part because the entrance to the low-income building is on the 41st Street side, which is fairly bereft of anything interesting other than a bus garage.

"As planned, it will look and feel like the maids' quarters for the rest of the project," the letter, sent last week, said.

The two high-rises, arranged on the north and south sides of the block, will be entered from a plaza in between the two of them, which, in turn, will be reached via sidewalks or driveways accessible from both 41st and 42nd streets. There will also be some retail on the 41st Street side, according to a source familiar with the development.

Silverstein spokesman Dara McQuillan defended the plan, saying in a statement, "We have designed a residential community that will add 318 exquisite apartments for moderate- and low-income residents and families of the community, and we have no doubt that each of the units will be highly sought after." - Matthew Schuerman

In a strongly worded editorial, analyst Peter Slatin unloads on two major New York real estate projects that recently took big steps forward.

Mr. Slatin calls the Freedom Tower, for which steel columns were placed last week, "the egregiously clunky and skyline-sucking icon that Larry Silverstein and outgoing New York Governor George Pataki are determined to force on the city."

He, however, reserves his most searing ire for the Atlantic Yards project, which was approved by the state Public Authorities Control Board last week. Declaring some parts of it admirable (the new Nets arena, the fact that it will eradicate an old train yard), Mr. Slatin nevertheless dubs Atlantic Yards no better than one of the worst Hollywood movies yet made:

[Bruce] Ratner and [Frank] Gehry's Atlantic Yards, however, is more like "Ishtar" than, say, "Vertigo": big and stupid. Gehry's design deftly succeeds at simply overpowering itself and its surroundings, and offers its residents no homey concessions to the place they call home. It has all the urban charm of Cabrini-Green.

Ouch.

- Tom Acitelli