Rockefeller Center. Photo by Michael Young

Savannah Guthrie, Hoda Kotb, Craig Melvin, and Al Roker co-hosted the Christmas in Rockefeller Center TV special, while Access Hollywood’s Mario Lopez, WNBC-TV news anchor Stefan Holt, and News 4 New York anchor Natalie Pasquarella hosted from 7:00pm to 8:00pm. There were live performances from Derek & Julianne Hough, Idina Menzel, Lea Michele, Ne-Yo, Billy Porter, Straight No Chaser, Jordan Fisher, and Skylar Astin & Alex Newell from NBC’s Zoey’s Extraordinary Playlist. Additional appearances by Miss America 2019 Nia Franklin, the Radio City Rockettes, Jon Bon Jovi, Chicago, Brett Eldredge, John Legend, and Gwen Stefani were also a big part of the show.

The Christmas tree, which is a Norway Spruce, comes from the town of Florida, NY and was planted as a sapling by Carol Schultz in 1959. It now stands 77 feet tall in the middle of the Big Apple and was shipped over 60 miles to its current resting place. It surpassed the height and weight of last year’s tree by five feet and two tons. Topping the evergreen off is a giant 900-pound Swarovski Crystal star that was designed by Daniel Libeskind and measures 112 inches in diameter. There are three million individual crystals that will brightly sparkle and shine in the daytime and nighttime thanks to LED backlighting. The crystals radiate from the center and are placed on 30 spikes. Over 50,000 multi-colored lights hug and wrap around the Christmas Tree.

The tree will be on display until January 17, 2020, when it will be taken down to be donated and used as lumber for Habitat For Humanity.

Investor co-developing northern portion of St. John’s Terminal siteTRD New York /December 02, 2019 04:35 PMBy Rich Bockmann

110 Leroy Street (Credit: Google Maps)

The developer that sold the site of Google’s future Hudson Square headquarters last year is not done with the neighborhood.

Atlas Capital Group is in contract to buy a large commercial building on the border of the West Village and Hudson Square, just a few blocks from the former St. John’s Terminal building that will house Google’s $1 billion office, sources told The Real Deal.ADVERTISING

The investment and development firm is paying $79.5 million for the nine-story, 80,000-square-foot building at 110 Leroy Street, according to a source familiar with the deal. The seller is Arthur Leeds Associates.

Representatives from Atlas Capital and Arthur Leeds did not respond to requests for comment. A CBRE team led by Darcy Stacom and Bill Shanahan marketed the property. The brokers couldn’t be reached.

Atlas Capital Group, headed by principals Jeff Goldberger and Andy Cohen, is familiar with the neighborhood. The company and its partner Westbrook Partners spent years negotiating a rezoning for the massive St. John’s Terminal a few blocks away in Hudson Square, a portion of which they sold to Oxford Properties Group early last year for $700 million.

Oxford is developing the southern part of the site into a 1.3 million-square-foot office building for Google. Atlas and Westbrook are reportedly planning to build somewhere between 350 and 430 apartments — a mix of market-rate and affordable/senior housing — on land they kept on the northern portion of the site.

Atlas has experience with both commercial and residential investments. The company co-owns a 1.1 million-square-foot former industrial building in Long Island City that Atlas and its partners repositioned as the trendy “Factory” office building. And Atlas developed the 10-unit, Annabelle Selldorf–designed condo building at 42 Crosby Street in Soho.

The immediate area around 110 Leroy Street is full of pricey new residential developments, such as Shibumi Development’s townhouse and condominium project at 601 Washington Street one block over and Property Markets Group’s 13-unit 111 Leroy Street condo directly across the street.