Isaac Tshuva and the Tribeca Clock Tower building

Condos at the Tribeca Clock Tower building are finally ready to hit the market — and they need to sell fast.

The Elad Group, which spearheaded the condo conversion at 108 Leonard Street, has to sell 35 units by August, according to Curbed. Additionally, if they do not finish the project within five years of the sale, the city can take the property back.

The Tribeca building was previously a criminal court, and the effort to turn it into a condo project was announced five years ago. There are a total of 150 apartments at the project that have between one and four bedrooms and will go for between roughly $1.5 million to more than $20 million. Douglas Elliman will handle sales and marketing.

Amenities at the building include a gym, a pool, a screening room and a rooftop lounge.

A judge ruled last year that the clock tower part of the project could not be part of the penthouse, but Elad is still going ahead with the rest of the development. The Peebles Corporation had sued Elad for $125 million over the project last winter, saying that the company cheated it out of its ability to sell its stake, but they settled the dispute last year in an agreement that lets Peebles keep its minority stake.

Dell, 52, has a net worth of $23.3 billion, according to Forbes. Earlier this month, he confirmed chatter that he was considering taking Dell Technologies public again, after going private in 2013.  Dell’s private investment firm, MSD Capital, is an active real estate investor, backing projects such as Sharif El-Gamal’s 45 Park Place and picking up stakes in properties such as  Grand Central Terminal. And Dell is no stranger to fancy personal real estate either. In November, he entered contract to buy a penthouse at what will become Boston’s tallest residential tower. That deal, too, could set a new record in the city. He also owns the so-called Raptor Residence in Hawaii, a three-lot property recently assessed at $64.7 million.

Leighton Candler represented Dell in the One57 deal, according to the newspaper. That gives the Corcoran Group broker the distinction of handling the city’s record sale, though the deal is expected to be topped by one or more deals at Vornado Realty Trust’s 220 Central Park South. A penthouse there is reportedly in contract to sell for over $200 million to hedge funder Ken Griffin.

It’s apt that Dell has been outed now. Tomorrow is his birthday.  [WSJ] — Hiten Samtani

If sections of Bleecker and Christopher streets look a little post-apocalyptic, you can blame the retail real estate market.

Amid skyrocketing rents and competition from e-commerce giants like Amazon, a growing number of stores and restaurants in the West Village shut down in recent years. Photojournalist Ben Fractenberg walked through the neighborhood to map vacant storefronts, which seem to be everywhere.

“Everything is gone. I don’t know how a business could spend that much money,” one resident told Fractenberg. “This whole area used to be more little shops. It’s sad.”

The New York Times broke down Bleecker Street’s retail vacancies last year, but the epidemic is also spreading to nearby Sixth and Seventh avenues and other side streets.

The Real Deal previously mapped retail vacancies on the Upper East Side and in Soho. [Medium] — Konrad Putzier

Manhattan’s average asking rents fell in 2017 for the first time in seven years.

Manhattan’s office market saw average asking rents fall in 2017 for the first time in seven years, as landlords lowered prices and more expensive spaces left the market.

Average asking rents declined slightly by 0.7 percent to $72.74 per square foot compared to 2016, according to Colliers International, marking the first annual decline since the Great Recession.

“It’s the first time since 2010 that at the year-end mark, the average asking rent was down compared to the previous year’s end mark,” said Franklin Wallach, managing director of the research group at Colliers. “However, pockets of Manhattan did have their asking rent averages increase in 2017.”

Lower Manhattan stood out as the lone market where asking rents increased year-over-year (up 6.8 percent to $63 per square foot), as all five of its submarkets recorded gains.

The submarkets of Soho, Murray Hill, Hudson Square, U.N. Plaza and the Hudson Yards/ Manhattan West area also saw price increases. In fact, Hudson Yards/Manhattan West supplanted the Plaza District as Manhattan’s most expensive submarket, though its small size – 7.74 million square feet compared to the Plaza District’s 55.3 million square feet –makes it much more sensitive to shifts in pricing.

But both Midtown and Midtown South saw average asking rents decline last year due to a combination of three factors. Landlords with large blocks of space at pricey buildings such as 9 West 57th Street and 399 Park Avenue lowered asking rents, as they face competition from areas like the Far West Side and Lower Manhattan.

Blocks of space like the sublet space the New York Times is offering at its headquarters at 620 Eighth Avenue and the square footage the union 1199/SEIU is leaving behind at 330 West 42nd Street hit the market at below-average pricing.

And finally, large blocks of expensive space priced above the market average – such as the 471,000 square feet New York Presbyterian leased at 237 Park Avenue and the 226,000 square feet Shiseido leased at 390 Madison Avenue – came off the market, skewing the average lower.

“Really in 2017, it was a case of all three,” Wallach explained.

Despite the annual drop in asks, market fundamentals remained strong. Leasing activity was up 10.9 percent on the year to 37.05 million square feet, the second-highest total since 2003. Net absorption – or the difference between space leased and new space added to the market – was positive at 1.26 million square feet, according to Colliers’ metrics. The availability rate ticked down slightly to 10 percent – a figure that’s widely considered to be the equilibrium between a landlords’ and tenants’ market – and sublet availability remained stable at 1.8 percent.

Architect John Portman among the buildings of his signature project, Peachtree Center
in Atlanta. (Photo © Michael Portman, courtesy 2011 press kit)

Known for his towering atrium designs with transparent glass elevators, notably in hotels, John Portman viewed development as an integral part of being an architect. He died, at the age of 93, on Friday, according to the New York Times.

Portman founded his firm, John Portman & Associates, in 1953 after getting architecture degree from the Georgia Institute of Technology. Originally from Atlanta, he was born in 1924 and believed in managing the financing of his projects through acquisition and securing loans.

His breakout project was the Peachtree Center in his hometown – a massive project that covered 14 blocks and consisted of retail, hotel and office towers. His approach to “urban renewal,” a much touted-goal of many projects at the time, raised his personal star power and created a style that, though both revered and criticized, changed hotel design.

“You want to hopefully spark their enthusiasm. Like riding in a glass elevator: Everyone talks on a glass elevator,” he said in 2011. “Architecture should be a symphony.”

His other notable projects include The Marriott Marquis in Times Square, the Westin Bonaventure in Los Angeles and Hyatt Regency hotels in Atlanta and San Francisco to name a few. His designs live on across the U.S. and throughout Asia from Shanghai to Mumbai.

Portman never retired and most recently spoke at The Real Deal’s Shanghai event last month.

[NYT] — Erin Hudson