Steve Roth

Vornado Realty Trust CEO Steve Roth told investors Tuesday that he wants to redo Penn Station in a scaled-back version of the grand Moynihan Station plan, moving Madison Square Garden’s WaMu theater out of the arena structure to make way for a large train station entrance hall.

Despite a push by Vornado and co-developer Related Companies to keep the larger-scale project alive via government support, Mr. Roth indicated he considers that scenario unlikely.

“[We] basically feel that something good is going to happen,” he said. “Either that the governments are going to get their acts together, which they probably will not, or ... we have with Madison Square Garden a Plan B, which is they stay where they are, we take out the theater, we—underneath the seating bowl of the arena—put a new grand entrance to Eighth Avenue and a new grand entrance to the station on Seventh Avenue, and what that will do is create a grand train station. Not quite as grand as moving it, but pretty nice. Actually, spectacularly nice.”  read more »

At least two former Manhattan Mall retailers have sued landlord Steve Roth's Vornado Realty Trust over their recent evictions from the mall to make way for a new 150,000-square-foot J.C. Penney department store.

Proprietors of Pretzel Time and Square One Shoes & Clothing each claim in separate lawsuits that their leases were prematurely and illegally terminated last month.  read more »

In the beginning, there were five teams that included the city's biggest developers vying for the West Side rail yards. Today, the board of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the yards' owner, voted to negotiate solely with Tishman Speyer over acquiring and developing the 26-acre site.

Gary Dellaverson, the MTA's CFO, talked at today's board meeting about the bidding that was closely watched for months even though few people beyond those directly involved knew what was really going on. According to Mr. Dellaverson and an MTA summary handed out to board members:  read more »

Despite the national housing market crisis and some serious global competition, Manhattan real estate moguls maintained a commanding presence in the billionaires club in 2008, according to Forbes’ annual list.

Donald Trump fell from No. 314 in 2007 to 368 this year with a net worth of $3 billion. The founder of Related Companies, Stephen Ross, jumped from No.  read more »

Vornado Realty Trust will now pay four times as much for air rights over the Port Authority Bus Terminal than it would have under an earlier agreement abandoned four years ago, according to a deal announced today

“I’m sad,” Vornado’s Chairman and Chief Executive Steven Roth said after a press conference at the terminal this morning. “Let’s not talk about the past. But the answer is that what we are paying for the air rights is in sync with where commercial rents are.”

In other words, he can afford it. Otherwise, why bother renegotiating the deal?

Vornado and a partner, Ruben Companies, will pay roughly $500 million over the length of the 99-year-lease, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey said. The 1.3 million-square-foot building will rise 42 stories over the north end of the terminal, using air rights transferred from the south end, according to Frank DiMola, deputy director of development at the Port Authority. The exact height was not available.

The earlier deal, which newspapers have valued variously at $110 million to $130 million, was struck in 2000, but was called off in 2003, apparently because of the poor economy. Since then, the real estate market has rebounded and even Eighth Avenue, once the tawdry edge of Times Square, has become respectable.

The revenue will pay for renovations at the terminal--making the brick interior a bit brighter, improving pedestrian circulation, adding bus gates—as well as pay for part of a $545 million bus garage that the Port Authority wants to build somewhere on the West Side.

Mr. Roth said that ground would be broken in two years and the tower would be completed in 2013.  read more »

The joint proposal for the West Side Rail Yards by the Durst Organization and Vornado Realty Trust is obsessed with getting people to the far West Side. The developers propose a subterranean “people mover” below 33rd Street that would carry up to 20,000 riders an hour from Penn Station to 11th Avenue (although it was not clear just who would pay for it); a pedestrian skyway that floats over the entire site and Hudson River Park; and a new headquarters for Condé Nast.

“We felt that we wanted to maintain the kind of porosity that we get in the best parts of the city,” said architect Rafael Pelli, who designed the plan along with FxFowle. “We are really trying to relate it to Union Square, Bryant Park or even a Times Square. We are thinking about how this is going to be a diverse and useful area and attract people from a greater catchment area rather than an enclave.”

The plan, one of five submitted to purchase the yards from the MTA, envisions four office or mixed-use towers, the tallest of which will be 1,205 feet tall. (It's online here.) The new Condé Nast headquarters would go at the southeast corner of 33rd Street and 11th Avenue. Overall, the plan is heavier on residential space than the other four proposals, with about 7,000 apartments, an unspecified number of which would be affordable.

A broad low-lying kunsthalle on the southeastern flank would house a cultural institution; its 120,000-square-foot floor plates, Mr. Pelli said, would be ideal for flower and antique shows (and, one might add, provide competition for the troubled Javits Convention Center expansion plan on the other side of 34th street).

The project, in keeping with Douglas Durst’s environmentally progressive reputation, includes a number of green features, among them a co-generation plant to capture the heat thrown off by generating electricity; a treatment plant that would allow the complex to reuse wastewater for plumbing purposes; and bris soleil, a type of awning that would shade out the summer light while letting in winter light.

Vornado, with its $18 billion in assets, is lending some financial heft to the bid.

“A lot will rely on the capital strength of the bidder,” Vornado Chairman and Chief Executive Steve Roth said. “I think it is obvious that this is an enormously complex project so the success of the project may ride and fall on the financial strength of the winning bidder; that will be a very important differentiating tactic.”

Probably never had so many of New York’s real estate elite crammed themselves into such a small space as happened Sunday afternoon at the press preview of proposals to develop the Western Rail Yards: Steve Roth, Stephen Ross, Jerry Speyer and his son Rob, Ric Clark, Gary Barnett, Steven Holl, Helmut Jahn and Rafael Pelli. S.I. Newhouse even dropped by, very casually dressed, as proof that if Mr. Roth’s bid won, he’d move Condé Nast west to 10th Avenue.

They all crammed themselves into a vacant storefront on West 43rd Street to show of their versions of New York’s future: towering buildings that will pack some 30,000 residents and workers into a six-square block area along the Hudson River, between 30th and 33rd streets. The architectural models themselves costs tens of thousands of dollars; the bids, submitted last month, ate up a few million, according to a number of developers.

Not surprisingly, the five teams talked a lot about how their particular plan creates a vibrant new neighborhood-- this, after all, is the retail version of the plans. No financials were disclosed, and the point is to try to curry favor with the public to create a popular favorite. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority--which, with the Bloomberg administration’s input, will choose the winner in the next few months--has got to pay more attention to how much money each team is offering, when they’d be able to pay it, and how likely they’d get it done.

“There are two or three of these that are done by teams that are really competent,” said Mr. Roth, “and in the end I think it's going to be the financial part of the deal that is going to differentiate them.”

Each of the plans profess to save the northern section of the High Line and promise to provide at least some affordable housing. The tallest buildings would stretch 1,000, 1,100, even 1,300 feet into the air. (The Empire State Building now clocks in at 1,250 feet.) The cost, according to a number of the developers, will likely come in between $10 billion to $20 billion, with completion anticipated in the early 2020’s

There were also plenty of wild and creative ideas, like, from Brookfield Properties, Diller Scofidio & Renfro's towers (pictured above) that are joined by a quarter-mile running track; mechanisms to reuse sullage for irrigation; patent-pending technology to create a better platform over the rail yards; a movie screen on which 20th Century Fox could premiere new films; and so on.

The exhibit of the five proposals, which includes architectural models, displays and videos, will be open to the public every day for the next two weeks, from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., starting today (with the exception of Thanksgiving). The address is 335 Madison Avenue, although the storefront is really located at the northwest corner of 43rd Street and Vanderbilt Avenue. Comment cards will be available for visitors to give input.

The Real Estate will post synopses of the five designs throughout the day.

Steve Roth's Vornado is back. And thanks to Donald Trump.

Mr. Roth has purchased for $1.81 billion a majority stake in 1290 Avenue of the Americas and a San Francisco building from a group of investors led by Mr. Trump.

Vornado will take a 70 percent majority stake at 1290 A of A, a 1.9-million-square-foot building between 51st and 52nd streets. He purchased his share at $775 per square foot, and this deal puts the building's value at $1.55 billion. Mr. Trump and his partnership, Hudson Waterfront Assocates, paid $1.2 billion for the building last year.

It was Mr. Roth's Vornado that lost in a bidding war to Blackstone for Equity Office Properties in February. And then Mr. Roth lost even bigger to Harry Macklowe when Blackstone sent eight of Equity Office's former Manhattan buildings to Macklowe Properties for $7 billion.

Now, Mr. Roth has a new 2-million-square-foot building on Sixth Avenue to serve as a good, quick and needed pick-me-up.

Full release after the jump.  read more »

- John Koblin

In the Times's EOP post-mortem this morning, Terry Pristin takes a look at Steve Roth, the head of Vornado who lost big to Blackstone in a months-long bidding war. The conclusion: It's a defeat, but Roth's reptuation is safely in place.

"He had a defeat in an unbroken string of successes, which is something unusual for him," said Doug Durst to the Times. "But it's not like he had a project go south on him, so it's not a terrible black mark."

The evidence? Wall Street still backs him. Vornado's share stands at $134.65 and on the day Mr. Roth backed out, the company's share rose more than 7 percent.

- John Koblin

Chairman Steve Roth told investors why Vornado is interested in the Madison Square Garden swap (we wrote about it this week) at an investors conference yesterday:

"We are about making money here on a grand scale," David Lombino reports in The Sun.

Well, at least he's honest.

Roth added: "As an unintended consequence, the city will benefit enormously from a new world-class arena and facility."

Unintended consequence?

-Matthew Schuerman

The story on the Madison Square Garden flip in the current issue of the Observer showed how Steven Roth, chairman of Vornado, would win big if the deal goes through. We have since learned that the idea for moving the Garden goes all the way back to 2003, and that it wasn’t Roth who thought of it, at least according to one insider’s account, but rather two executives at the state economic development agency in charge of the redeveloping the Farley Post Office, the back end of which may one day make way for the arena.  read more »