Financial District

When Jongmin Park and his wife Soye moved from Battery Park City to a condo at 90 William Street three years ago, the conversion of the Financial District into a 24-hour retail and residential neighborhood was just beginning.

When they first arrived, all the restaurants and stores closed on the weekends and the neighborhood turned into a “ghost town,” he said. Things have changed so much since then that Mr. Park’s biggest complaint about living there is no longer a lack of amenities, but the nearly constant din of construction.

“This place used to be geared towards billionaires,” Mr.  read more »

Rocky Twyman, a Seventh Day Adventist who rallied hundreds of Americans to pray for lower fuel prices at gas stations across the country last spring and summer, camped in front of the New York Stock Exchange on Halloween for the inauguration of his latest movement: "Pray Down the Greed on Wall Street."

"This is just the beginning of our movement," Mr. Twyman said as a camera crew lingered impatiently for an interview. "We are going to do all we can to alert these Wall Street executives that God is watching them. God is over all of this. He is the one that can destroy them if they keep doing this.  read more »

Symptoms of the credit crunch in the Financial District became obvious over the summer, when commercial and residential vacancy rates rose and a slew of new luxury condos spilled onto the market as rentals. Now, signs offering occupants incentives like no brokers’ fees and one month’s free rent are as plentiful on the sidewalks as camera-toting tourists.

The Financial District has certainly become an apartment hunters’ market since Lehman Brothers officially folded just over five weeks ago, on Sept. 15. Elsewhere in real estate, however, the financial crisis' impact remains unclear.  read more »

It doesn't say much about our learning curve, but as frightening as all of this economic news seems, we've been through it all before. More than once.

GVA Williams broker and history buff Richard Warshauer and political historian James Kaplan, also an attorney, will lead this year's 20th annual financial history tour of Lower Manhattan, sponsored by the Museum of American Finance, on Oct. 25 at 1 p.m.

The tour promises to commemorate "the Great Crash of 1929, the Panic of 1907 and the 1987 stock market collapse, as well as [delve] into the political, financial, real estate and architectural history of Wall Street and New York City. The tour shows that despite such adversities as the Great Fires of 1776 and 1835, financial panics of the 19th century, the 1920 Wall Street explosion, the Crash of 1929, the stock market collapse of 1987, the terrorist attack of September 11, 2001 and the mortgage crisis of 2008, New York and Wall Street have always recovered their position as the world’s financial capital."

Here's the full release below:  read more »

What a great week to launch a new restaurant in the Financial District!

“We’re all nervous about what’s happening with the economy, but we’ve got to charge through it,” said chef Todd English, dressed like an urban Johnny Cash in all black, as he celebrated the opening of his latest eatery, Libertine, at the Gild Hall hotel on Gold Street on Wednesday night.

“There’s no right time or wrong time to open a place like this,” added hotelier Jason Pomeranc. “It is our duty as hoteliers and restaurateurs to provide the inns and watering holes where people can celebrate their victories and mourn their losses.  read more »

Syms -- the family-controlled bargain clothing retailer with a massive and massively ugly white department store on Trinity Place -- admitted to shareholders that it earns more from its real estate holdings than from its clothing sales, yet Marcy Syms, the CEO, continues to insist the company is not a REIT.

Ms. Syms said that the company earned $2 million last year in rent from its property holdings nationwide, yet only a meager $807,000 in net revenue from clothing sales, according to an item in today's Wall Street Journal.

As The Observer reported last week, many shareholders suspect the Syms family, which still owns 57 percent of the company stock, of trying to take the company private again, so it can reap more of the dividends from its growing real estate empire -- which includes a growing assemblage of air rights and properties around its store in the Financial District.  read more »

After a lengthy legal fight, ravenous hotel developer Sam Chang has apparently given up his plan to tear down the old Pussycat Lounge at 96 Greenwich Street.

Mr. Chang has agreed to sell the ancient, circa-1799 building to Pussycat owner Robert Kremer for $2.5 million, according to city records -- that's $1 million less than Mr. Chang paid for it in 2005.  read more »

Ravenous hotel developer Sam Chang continues to devour buildings in the Financial District.

Just a month ago, 99 Washington Street, site of Mr. Chang's forthcoming 350-room Holiday Inn, was still standing--albeit shrouded in a death-black curtain (pictured left).Over the past several weeks, crews have dismantled almost the entire building (right).

Next up to come down: 50 Trinity Place, just one block away, site of an unnamed 186-room McSam hotel. (The demolition permit was issued Jan. 12.)

Both hotels are scheduled for Mid 2009 opening.

The Financial District has been in the news a lot this week:

• First, Merrill Lynch hinted strongly that the firm would move from there to midtown.
• We wondered what that would do to the Hotel Pennsylvania.
• The Downtown Alliance had a lot to say on the move, too.
• Israel's biggest builder bought the building at 87 Chambers, probably to build a hotel.
• And then Michael Shvo announced today he'd start selling the District's newest condos early next month.
• We'll be watching...

And so will others. The Observer's print edition on Wednesday had a story by Lysandra Ohrstrom on the city's plans to install 3,000 surveillance cameras below Canal Street.

We just got an email from Shvo, the marketing firm run by the redoubtable Michael Shvo, to say that the condos inside the future W New York Downtown will go on sale Nov. 7.

The Observer broke the news in March of Mr. Shvo's work on the tower at 123 Washington Street, which is being developed by Joseph Moinian. The tower will include 222 condos and 217 hotel rooms.

Shvo is also marketing the condos at 20 Pine The Collection, another financial district creation that's helping change the neighborhood, for better or for worse.

The full flowering of the financial district’s success since Sept. 11, 2001, can be smelt within the Broad Street Hermès store, which had its first full day Friday.

To be amongst its $1,250 t-shirts, $520 belts, $5,750 leather jackets and $810 handbags is to feel the full braggadocio of capitalism in Manhattan—Power! Money! Stephen Schwarzman!—and it felt pretty good, though a bit disquieting. After all, the prices!  read more »