November 01, 2016
By Marynia Kruk

The EB-5 visa program, which grants foreigners a provisional right to live, work and study in America in exchange for investing at least $500,000 in job-creating business ventures, was extended once again in late September. But, in this case, only until Dec. 9, at which point the program will likely face significant changes if it doesn’t expire or get another short-term extension. And a major beneficiary of the policy — the New York City real estate industry — is closely watching the various proposed overhauls. Major developers including Forest City Ratner Companies, the Durst Organization, Silverstein Properties and Related Companies have taken low-cost loans from the program’s aspiring immigrants and used them to plug financing gaps on projects throughout the city.

Enthusiasm for such an arrangement isn’t surprising if one looks at the math. Foreigners agree to a below-market return on their investment (reportedly 1 percent in some cases) because they get something else out of it: a United States green card. Meanwhile, developers are able to reap the benefits of cheap financing by acting as middlemen for something that costs them nothing, another individual’s path to citizenship.

What is surprising is how long it took for EB-5 to gain traction. While Congress created the program in 1990 to help stimulate the U.S. economy, applications didn’t begin flooding in until after the 2008 financial crisis. That’s when developers’ and other entrepreneurs’ need for financing dovetailed with the desire of foreigners — overwhelmingly mainland Chinese citizens — to gain entry to the States. Most recently, EB-5 has become a victim of its own success.

A waiting list has made it less appealing for those who initially found the program’s quick turnaround enticing. In the first half of 2016, applications plunged 51 percent from a year earlier, according to the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services agency. And as major reform proposals get floated, including a potential increased price of entry, the possibility remains that all the scrutiny could doom the program in the long run. As the debate rumbles on, TRD takes a look at what stakeholders and opponents have said in recent months and throughout the years.

(Click to enlarge)

November 15, 2016 04:43PM
By Katherine Clarke and Grabrielle Paluch

Jared Kushner and Chris Christie

New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie has had quite the week. First he was removed as the head of President-elect Donald Trump’s White House transition team. Now, his allies are being booted too. At the helm of that effort? None other than real estate developer Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and close consigliere.

Kushner is reportedly throwing Trump’s transition efforts into disarray by pushing out personnel who were tapped by Christie, Bloomberg reported. Former House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers, who was tapped by Christie to lead national security planning, was among those ousted in recent days. The Kushner Companies CEO reportedly fought against having Christie on Trump’s election ticket, ruining his chances of becoming the country’s VP. It reads like a modern twist on “The Count of Monte Cristo.”

So what exactly is Kushner’s disdain for Christie? His distaste for the politician has been widely documented and linked to Christie’s involvement in the prosecution of Kushner’s father Charles Kushner, who was sentenced to prison in 2005 on 18 counts of tax evasion, witness tampering and making illegal campaign donations.

But to fully understand the genesis of the bad blood, you must look back to 2005, when Christie, then U.S. Attorney, pounded his chest over his success in getting a guilty verdict in the Kushner case. He’d pushed for Kushner to be sentenced to three years for his crimes, which included hiring a prostitute to seduce his brother-in-law and capture it on videotape in an act of retaliation against his sister, a witness for the prosecution. He told the New York Times that Kushner had failed to show an “acceptance of responsibility” in the case.

Kushner was ultimately sentenced to two years and served one. It sank his career and his chances of becoming the Chairman of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey.

“It shows that no matter how rich and powerful you are in this state you will be prosecuted and punished for crimes you commit,” Christie said in a statement at the time. “This sends a strong message that when you commit the vile and heinous acts that he has committed you will be caught and punished.”

The win was said to have helped the sharp-tongued Christie brand himself as a tough-on-corruption candidate in preparation for his run for governor in 2009.

A young Jared Kushner, who’d learned of his father’s arrest while interning at then-Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau’s office, took the news particularly hard. In 2013, he told The Real Deal that he’d even changed his career course because of the handling of his father’s case.

“My dad’s arrest made me realize I didn’t want to be a prosecutor anymore,” he said. “The law is so nuanced. If you’re convicting murderers, it’s one thing. It’s often fairly clear. When you get into things like white-collar crime, there are often a lot of nuances. Seeing my father’s situation, I felt what happened was obviously unjust in terms of the way they pursued him. I just never wanted to be on the other side of that and cause pain to the families I was doing that to, whether right or wrong. The moral weight of that was probably a bit more than I could carry.”

But Kushner and his father’s beef with Christie goes even deeper than his father’s prison time. They have also taken issue with the politician’s close relationship with Charles’ brother, Murray Kushner. The criminal proceedings against Charles reportedly stemmed from complaints made to federal election regulators by Murray. Beyond that, Murray continued to donate to the New Jersey Republican Party even after his brother was incarcerated.

There were allegations of impropriety, with the Kushners intimating that Murray had not come under the same legal scrutiny as his brother, the Newark Star-Ledger reported.

Charles and Murray had an acrimonious relationship from childhood. In 1999, it was Murray who scuppered a bid by Kushner Companies to acquire Berkshire Realty. The deal would have catapulted the Kushners into the top ranks of private real estate firms in America. The Blackstone Group ultimately won control of the real estate investment trust and its nearly 25,000 units with a $1.3 billion bid.

Charles also questioned Murray’s family life, primarily because he had married a shiksa (a gentile) named Lee. During Passover in 2000, an argument boiled over, leading Murray to tell Charles that if they were incapable of being partners, then they “can’t be brothers.” Shortly after that, Murray sued Charles over money he was allegedly owed from real estate partnerships, but the case was settled in arbitration and remains sealed.

Kushner put his father’s missteps behind him.

“My father made a mistake and he paid a big price for it, but he’s my father,” he previously told TRD. “He’s given me everything I have in terms of the skills and the training and taught me about being a man. I feel extremely lucky to have him in my life.”

But, in the case of Chris Christie, forgiveness may not come as easily.

November 11, 2016 10:50AM

Trump Tower at 725 Fifth Avenue and Donald Trump

It’s a hard-knock life for the residents of Trump Tower right now, and some are considering jumping ship.

Protesters are making it difficult for residents to get in and out of the building, where the president-elect lives in a triplex penthouse, the New York Post reported. Security at the Fifth Avenue tower is ramped up. So, according to the Post, some residents are mulling selling their units.

“They can’t get into their own homes without being stopped and frisked and having to show ID,” one broker told the Post. “These are wealthy people. They don’t need this, and they can’t take it any longer. They no longer want to stay there. Some of them are already planning on moving out, and they’ll decide later whether or not they want to sell.”

Before Tuesday’s election, the Secret Service warned that if Trump won the election, he shouldn’t stay at his penthouse at Trump Tower when he visits New York. At the time, officials told the Post that the building’s security measures weren’t president-ready. [NYP] — Kathryn Brenzel 

November 01, 2016
By Hiten Samtani and Will Parker

Vornado’s Steven Roth and One Penn Plaza

“Don’t be jerky,” Steven Roth told Gary Barnett. “It’s not even close.”

Sitting among other industry titans at Bloomberg LP’s headquarters last spring, Roth was in full troll mode. Barnett had dared to suggest that One57, his cathedral for the 0.1 percent, was better than Roth’s luxury condo tower in the works at 220 Central Park South. And when Jeff Blau spoke about the upcoming condos at Hudson Yards, Roth quipped that his firm, the Related Companies, was “selling to the suckers.” Of his lender at 220 CPS, the Vornado Realty Trust chairman and CEO said: “I’m in the suck-up business to the Bank of China.”

The chiefs of public companies tend to be careful to a fault about what they say in public. Not Roth, who is one of the last in a line of brash hustlers running blue-chip real estate investment trusts — very much in the vein of Sam Zell, whom he’s referred to as a “bald-headed chicken fucker.” At the same time, Roth has shown remarkable patience in turning Vornado, once a developer of New Jersey industrial properties and strip malls, into the $40 billion behemoth, with more than 30 million square feet of New York City holdings, it is today.

Vornado is now one of the largest owners of commercial property in Manhattan. And there is near-universal acclaim within the industry for the way that Roth has managed the company since Michael Fascitelli — his golden boy and former heir apparent — stepped down as CEO in 2013. The REIT made good on its promise to simplify its portfolio, shedding some of its troublesome fringe investments and doubling down on its prime New York retail holdings.

Vornado’s discipline has given it a fortified balance sheet that now allows it to make transformative bets, including the repositioning of 8 million square feet of office space in Penn Plaza, the $1.6 billion redevelopment of Moynihan Station and 220 CPS, the luxury market’s new prom queen.

A rendering of 220 Central Park South in Midtown (credit: Vornado)

Roth has championed the bulk of those initiatives, and his power at the company is absolute.

“He runs his company as if he owned it all, and his shareholders benefit from that,” Richard LeFrak, CEO of the LeFrak Organization and a close friend of Roth’s, told The Real Deal.

But the Vornado chief, who is now pushing 75, has yet to announce a clear successor — a glaring lack of transparency for a public company with an aging CEO. This makes some Vornado shareholders nervous about the REIT’s fate when he finally calls it quits. Will he leave a void that’s impossible to fill?

“It’s akin to the Grateful Dead,” said Alexander Goldfarb, an analyst at investment bank Sandler O’Neill. “No one wants to see the warm-up band.”

What makes the succession issue particularly grating for the REIT’s shareholders is that the many of Vornado’s biggest competitors appear to have figured it out.

Stephen Green, founder of SL Green Realty Corp., brought in Marc Holliday as the firm’s chief investment officer in 1998, and Holliday, who’s 50, has been its CEO since 2004. His second-in-command, Andrew Mathias, is in his mid-40s.

Meanwhile, Boston Properties’ founder, Mort Zuckerman, named Owen Thomas, a relative outsider, CEO in 2013. Thomas, who came to the REIT from Lehman Brothers Holdings — where he helped the underwater firm unravel its real estate assets — is 54. Related’s Blau, who started at the firm in the early 1990s and became its second CEO in 2012, is 48.

“Some companies will choose to be very upfront with it, and some companies will choose to keep it in the dark,” said John Guinee, a REIT analyst at financial services firm Stifel, Nicolaus & Co. “Usually what happens is, if they think they need to go outside the firm and hire an executive recruiter, then they go public with it. But in other cases, if they think that the candidate is internal, then they will keep it hush-hush.”

Greedy No. 1

But Roth has been known to pull rabbits out of his hat before.

Back in 2006, he had just acquired a prime retail site at 1540 Broadway, in a $260 million, all-cash deal. But Virgin Megastores had a 200-year lease in place, at 15 percent of market value. Unless Virgin left, the deal was a dud.

“We went upon a two-year mission to buy them out, and we flunked,” Roth recalled during an April 2011 quarterly luncheon hosted by the Real Estate Board of New York. “What we eventually did was we teamed up with Related, who had a similar situation in Union Square, and we bought the whole damn Virgin Record company operation in the United States, 20-some odd stores.”

He then pointed to a chuckling Stephen Ross, sitting next to him, and said: “Just so Greedy Number 1 could get his hands on it, and Greedy Number 2 could get that — and it worked!”

When reminded of the story last month, Ross laughed. “I love Steve Roth,” the Related chairman said, “[but] he’s greedier.” 

Acquiring a company for its underlying real estate was a textbook move for the Vornado chief.

Born in Brooklyn to a father who made children’s dresses, Roth attended DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx, whose alums include Bill Zeckendorf and Lewis Rudin. He got his start in real estate in the 1970s, building industrial properties in the New Jersey Meadowlands. But what made him a real player was buying a controlling interest in the Alexander’s department store chain in the 1990s.

“Alexander’s had a very big and important store in Paramus,” Roth told Crain’s last year. “And I’m sitting there and I’m driving past it and my wife goes, ‘If you’re so smart, why don’t you buy that?’ The next day I bought my first shares of stock in that company. The real estate was worth many multiples of what the retail business was, and the rest is history.”

Michael Fascitelli

While buying out the companies that stood in his way, Roth acquired top talent, too. In 1996, he convinced Fascitelli, then a Goldman Sachs hotshot, to come over to Vornado as president with a compensation package of $50 million, unheard of at the time in real estate. Kenneth Patton, a professor at NYU’s Schack Institute of Real Estate and a former REBNY president, said recruiting Fascitelli was Roth’s signal to his investors and the industry that he was serious. 

“With that hire, he was saying: ‘We’re going to be unsentimental. Not good ol’ boys, but young nasty boys who’ll do fucking things the way we gotta do it,’” Patton explained.

Roth and Fascitelli, who the New York Post crowned the “Gangstas of Brick,” matched each other for swagger and chutzpah and went after the biggest assets. In 1997, Vornado acquired Bernard Mendik’s Midtown office portfolio in a $654 million deal, a transaction that the research firm Green Street Advisors said was “among the best M&A deals in REIT history.”

They were also the front-runners to take over the World Trade Center site in 2001, but pulled out of the bid at the eleventh hour, and Larry Silverstein moved in.

In 2007, Blackstone Group had a deal in place to purchase Zell’s Equity Office Properties for about $48.50 a share or $36 billion — at the time the largest-ever leveraged buyout. When Zell solicited rival bids, Roth wrote him a couplet: “Roses are red, violets are blue. I love you Sam, our bid is 52.”

The rhyme set off an intense bidding war between Blackstone and Vornado, in which Blackstone eventually prevailed with a $39 billion offer. It was a career-defining moment for Jonathan Gray, Blackstone’s head of real estate, who said his firm expects to triple its investors’ money in the deal.

“It was like playing basketball in your backyard with your brother,” Gray told TRD of going up against Roth. “You want to win.”

Roth and a Vornado spokesperson declined several requests to comment for this story.

The second coming

Fascitelli’s last few years at the firm yielded mixed results.

The REIT took huge losses on its bets on Toys “R” Us and J.C. Penney, but he was still widely popular and seen as the man to lead Vornado into the next generation. His departure in 2013 was viewed as a major setback, with a Green Street report at the time describing it as a “succession failure.”

Vornado has always played by its own rules. It refused to hold quarterly earnings call until 2012, a notably opaque move for a publicly traded company, and even when announcing major deals, it rarely provides commentary. 

But Roth was forced to address Fascitelli’s exit. In a May 2013 earnings call, he assured investors that the REIT was working on a succession plan. 

“I’m 71.5 and it’s not appropriate for me to be the head of this company for another 10 years. It’s just not appropriate,” he said.

But he has barely addressed the issue since then — at least publicly.

Goldfarb compared it to the Coca-Cola recipe, calling Roth’s next successor the “greatest mystery in the history of the world.”

LeFrak, who’s 71, said Roth would figure it out when the time was right.

“If Steve felt for one minute that he couldn’t be really effective, he would do something about it,” he said.

Even if Roth has failed to ease investor concerns about his successor, he has managed to reinvent the company he founded. Since Fascitelli left Vornado, the REIT disposed of several office properties, including 1740 Broadway, 866 UN Plaza and 20 Broad Street. It also exited its stake in J.C. Penney, turned its mall portfolio into a separate REIT, sold off major commercial properties in Los Angeles, and spun off its $6 billion Washington, D.C., portfolio.    

Roth decided to focus on core Manhattan, where 69 percent of Vornado’s portfolio is now located, he said in an April letter to shareholders. In particular, the firm bet big on high-end retail, buying $1.3 billion worth of assets since 2013, according to Real Capital Analytics, including a $700 million deal for the St. Regis retail condo in partnership with Crown Acquisitions. 

Vornado now controls 20 percent of Upper Fifth Avenue’s retail frontage, including flagship stores for Victoria’s Secret, Salvatore Ferragamo, Harry Winston and Massimo Dutti. That stretch has become the world’s priciest shopping location, according to Cushman & Wakefield, with average rents north of $3,500 per square foot. And though street retail represents just 9 percent (2.6 million square feet) of Vornado’s total Manhattan holdings, it generates a third of the New York division’s earnings before interest, taxes and depreciation, Roth said in the April letter.

Many in the industry, including Roth, say Manhattan’s retail market is undergoing a correction, and landlords stubbornly holding out for top-dollar tenants may find themselves exposed.

“We’re not in a hope business, we’re in the realistic business, and I believe rents have gotten to the point where they’re too high,” Roth told investors on an August earnings call.

The REIT, however, is not sitting on much vacant space, and observers say it never lost its head.

“Vornado never overpaid for anything,” said Ron Cohen, a vice chairman of capital markets at JLL. Though landlords might have to accept lower rents for a time, street retail as an asset class remains attractive, he noted.

Forbes pegs Roth’s net worth at $1 billion. His compensation between 2012 and 2015 totaled $35 million, according to Vornado’s public filings. Last year’s figure included $261,724 for a car and driver (sources said driving is one of the few things Roth sucks at).

And with so much money in the bank, the Vornado chief could keep the trains running and leave the big development work for his successor. But several in the know said that’s not his style.

West Side story

Vornado’s “big Kahuna,” Roth said earlier this year, is the repositioning of its Penn Plaza portfolio. Through stealth assemblage plays over the years, the company now controls more than 9 million square feet of office and retail space in the gritty shopping district. Penn Plaza has recently begun to shake off its rusty brand, in part due to the emergence of Midtown South as a tech tenant haven and the rise of Hudson Yards.

The REIT will soon begin renovations of its two major towers next door to Penn Station — One and Two Penn Plaza — both dated office skyscrapers that it plans to completely redesign and connect together, forming a 4.2 million-square-foot mega complex.

Roth recently told investors he hopes to push office rents in his Penn Plaza buildings from the mid-$50s per foot up into the $80s, more on par with new developments two blocks west at Hudson Yards. And much of the redesign, judging by how Vornado executives have described it on an earnings call, seems set on just that: making the buildings look more like their sprightlier Far West Side neighbors.

In March, Danish starchitect Bjarke Ingels released renderings for the new 2 Penn Plaza, a glass-and-steel tower with an undulating canopy at its base inspired by the iconic photograph of Marilyn Monroe posing in a white dress atop a blowing subway grate.

Two Penn Plaza (credit: Bjarke Ingels Group via Yimby)

Sprucing up the Penn Plaza district is something Vornado has been obsessed with for years. More than a decade ago, Vornado and Related were tapped to redevelop the Farley Post Office into a train hall. The partners turned around and proposed something bolder: a $14 billion redevelopment that would have also transplanted Madison Square Garden across the street and replaced it with two skyscrapers, one taller than the Empire State building, and ten million square feet of office space. Then, in 2008, Gov. Eliot Spitzer resigned from office in the wake of his prostitution scandal, and plans for the new station and stadium were shelved.

“It just broke our hearts,” Roth said at a Columbia University talk in 2010. “Every time you go into Penn Station you should be a little bitter. Spit on the floor.”

By early 2016, Gov. Andrew Cuomo had pushed Vornado and Related out of the project altogether. But this September, Cuomo brought them back in the fold for a scaled-down version of the plan. In collaboration with the construction firm Skanska, the two developers will transform the Beaux Arts-style Farley Post Office into a train hall for the Long Island Rail Road, adding hundreds of thousands of square feet of commercial space along the way. The partners are expected to invest $600 million in the $1.6 billion project, which is slated for completion by 2020.

“We’re at the size now where [Roth] doesn’t need me and I don’t need him,” Related’s Ross told TRD in October. “But when we do something we do it because it works for both of us. And the fact is, we trust each other and we don’t let ego stand in the way of doing something, because certainly we both have the size and scale to do anything.”

A modernized Penn Station would be a boon to Vornado’s Penn Plaza bets. But observers question whether it could ever compete for top-tier tenants with Hudson Yards, which has signed the likes of L’Oreal, SAP, KKR and Time Warner.

“New product will always trade for a premium over existing product,” said JLL’s Rob Martin, who helped broker the Foot Locker flagship’s move to Vornado’s 330 West 34th Street. “But given the location, if [Roth] is able to modernize the buildings, he’ll be able to get a premium. Will it be on par with new construction? The market will tell.”

“15 CPW on steroids”

At the Bloomberg event last spring, Roth spoke candidly about why residential development isn’t his thing. He gestured upstairs to the One Beacon Court condos that Vornado developed above Bloomberg’s headquarters in 2005.

“I sold an apartment to a famous person for $24 million in this building a dozen years ago,” he said, alluding to SAC Capital’s Steve Cohen. “He has it on the market now for $85 million. I hate that!”

After completing One Beacon, Roth avoided residential condo construction for years. But 220 CPS — a site the REIT had entered as a lender — was an opportunity too lucrative to pass on. Vornado took control of the site after the owner got mired in financial troubles, and then kept assembling parcels for the luxury condo tower.

But to make it happen, Roth had to go up against Barnett’s Extell Development, which controlled a garage right under a key piece of land. It took two years before Barnett agreed to give up his lease, at which time he also sold Vornado a neighboring lot at 225 West 58th Street, plus additional air rights, for a total of $194 million.

“It was a big game of real estate chess, in which both sides had something that the other wanted — and a lot of value was at stake,” a source close to Vornado said on the condition of anonymity.

With full control of his coveted site and his low basis in the land, Roth decided to go all-out and develop a building that would be, in his words, “at the tippy top of the luxury market.”

In September 2015, the REIT upped its financing from the Bank of China on 220 CPS from $600 million to $950 million. The following month, Roth said Vornado was spending an extraordinary $3,500 per square foot on hard, soft and financial costs to develop the Robert A.M. Stern-designed tower.

There’s a special affection developers feel for their glitziest condo towers. Harry Macklowe is said to obsess over every small detail of 432 Park Avenue, the skinny supertall he regards as “the culmination” of his career. Arthur Zeckendorf will talk about 520 Park Avenue as though he were describing his favorite son. Roth, sources said, goes even further.

“He’s building this building as if he were going to live in every single apartment,” said Corcoran Group CEO Pam Liebman, whose new development arm, Corcoran Sunshine, is handling sales at the project.

Louise Sunshine, who was involved in pre-development and is consulting on the project until the end of this year, said Roth is “absolutely involved in every strategic decision.”

“He’s equally good at coping with numbers as he is sitting down with renderings and designing a living room,” she added.

Even Barnett had praise for his rival, saying 220 CPS’ success proves that despite the perception that the luxury condo market is doomed, the right product can still command big bucks. Roth’s project is “15 Central Park West on steroids,” Barnett told TRD in a recent interview.

The project has a total projected sellout of $3.17 billion for its 87 units, and last November, Vornado announced it had sold $1.1 billion worth of units in just six weeks. Roth has since refused to update the REIT’s shareholders on sales, saying the outsized media attention on the project could be damaging.

Personal politics

In 2011, Roth and his wife, Daryl, a veteran Broadway producer, donated money to three Republican state senators who were supporting same-sex marriage in New York.

“My son is gay and happily planning to marry soon,” Daryl told the New York Times in January 2012. That September, their son, Jordan, walked down the aisle with his longtime boyfriend, Richie Jackson.

A tuxedo-clad Roth gave a memorable toast at the wedding, held at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre on West 45th Street. He told Jordan: “You are complicated and can be difficult, but all the great ones are. My son, I want you to know, you are perfect in Mom and Dad’s eyes.”

The party then moved to Roseland, and included such guests as Barbara Walters, CBS’ Leslie Moonves, Goldman Sachs’ Blankfein and Tyra Banks. Also in attendance: Donald Trump.

Trump and Roth are partners on a skyscraper at 1290 Sixth Avenue, and have been good friends for years. Both men, sources said, are vicious negotiators and share an extreme arrogance.

But Roth’s support of Trump’s presidential run, a campaign in which he has proposed overturning same-sex marriage, took many by surprise.

Trump even gave Roth a special shout-out in his New York primary victory speech, calling the Vornado chief “my man.” And in August, the Trump campaign announced that Roth would be part of its economic advisory committee, a cadre that includes LeFrak, Vector Group’s Howard Lorber, and Colony Capital’s Tom Barrack.

Donald Trump

While few in the real estate industry reacted out loud, an executive at a rival developer said, “it was very hard to take [Roth] seriously on this Trump thing.”

It was left to playwright and gay rights activist Larry Kramer to call Roth out.

“I don’t know why but I was incredibly shocked and disappointed when it was announced that you had become one of Donald Trump’s billionaire brain trust,” Kramer wrote in an open letter to Roth on Facebook. “I could not believe that you could support a candidate, a vice-president, and a party that threatens many of the things that you hold most dear.”

For his part, Roth seems to have distanced himself from the Trump campaign. Federal election filings show he gave no money to the Republican candidate since Trump announced his bid last year, in contrast to Roth’s previous donations to Barack Obama, John McCain, Mitt Romney, and Hillary Clinton, among other politicians.

When asked about his role in Trump’s campaign in September, Roth was in no mood to talk about it. “I have nothing to say about the campaign, and I don’t spend any time on it,” he said at a conference hosted by Bank of America Merrill Lynch.

After the Tornado

Although Roth often seems like a permanent fixture at the company, observers said they see several veteran Vornado executives as contenders for the CEO role.

David Greenbaum, who runs the REIT’s New York division and has been with Vornado since 1997, is one, though several in the know said his personality could not be more different than Roth’s.

“He’s a phenomenal, brilliant guy,” said JLL’s Cohen of Greenbaum. But he’s “one of those mechanics that doesn’t come out of the garage.”

Roth, in contrast, is all rakish charm — an effusive, affectionate type who inspires tremendous loyalty. Corcoran’s Liebman recalled being on the driving range at the Miami golf club La Gorce right next to Goldman Sachs’ Lloyd Blankfein. Up strutted Roth, who bellowed: “Who do I say hello to, the money or the beauty? I’m gonna go with Pam!”

One other potential successor being discussed, according to sources, is Michael Franco, Vornado’s chief investment officer. Franco joined the REIT in 2010 from Morgan Stanley, where he was co-head of acquisitions and capital markets.

Roth could also opt to go outside the firm for his pick, sources said, though no clear outside contender has emerged.

Analysts said it was likely Roth has a plan in place, but doesn’t see the need to disclose it yet.

Sandler O’ Neill’s Goldfarb pointed to Boston Properties, whose appointment of Thomas came as a surprise. Many investors and analysts, he said, were expecting the firm to name Douglas Linde its president.

Blackstone’s Gray, who is 46 and considered one of the front-runners to become the firm’s next CEO once 69-year-old Stephen Schwarzman retires, said he expects Roth to make a smooth transition.

“Betting against Steve Roth,” Gray said, “is not a good way to go.”

Landmarking 10 blocks makes City Councilman Corey Johnson more likely to vote in favor of St. John’s Terminal project

By Joe Anuta

The Landmarks Preservation Commission is set to introduce a new South Village Historic District early next month—a move that will both appease preservationists and help grease the wheels for a massive mixed-use project nearby.

Organizations including the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation have pushed the commission to landmark 10 blocks to the southern portion of the existing South Village Historic District, which is roughly bounded by Sixth Avenue, West Fourth Street, LaGuardia Place and Houston Street, called Sullivan-Thompson Historic District. And in late August, City Councilman Corey Johnson, the local representative for the area, made the district’s expansion one of the conditions for his approval of a proposed 1.7-million-square-foot project, St. John’s Center, set to rise at 550 Washington St., across the street from Pier 40 in Hudson River Park. That project, which is also supported by the Hudson River Park Trust and the de Blasio administration, needs City Council approval.

“If we are to approve the 550 Washington St. application, the city must also extend landmark protections to the historic blocks south of Houston Street,” said Johnson during testimony before the City Planning Commission.

The de Blasio administration supports the project for a number of reasons, though mainly because 25% of the proposed 1,586 apartments will be enrolled in the city’s affordable housing program. However, it needs Johnson’s vote, since the council typically defers to the local representative on land-use matters. Meanwhile, the Hudson River Park Trust wants the pending rezoning application to go through because it’s selling $100 million worth of air rights from Pier 40 to the developers, a team of Westbrook Partners and Atlas Capital Group. The trust plans to use the cash to repair the deteriorating dock.

By putting the South Village Historic District expansion on its to-do list, the city is meeting one of Johnson’s demands—something that the Bloomberg administration did in a similar situation in 2013, when the South Village Historic District was expanded from its the initial 2011 boundary in order to get former City Council Speaker Christine Quinn to sign off on a proposal to allow residential development in Hudson Square.

“The city had to be forced to [expand the district] in exchange for the Hudson Square rezoning,” said Andrew Berman, head of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, which has sought to have the entire district landmarked for a decade. “Just like this time around.”

However, the designation does not guarantee that Johnson will give the St. John’s Center project a thumbs-up. While the developers have already made a number of alterations to the project in response to other community concerns, groups including Berman’s want to prohibit destination retail at the site. Johnson has also asked for a transportation study and permanently prohibiting the Hudson River Park Trust from selling more of its unused development rights to sites within Community District 2, which runs from the West Village in the north down to Hudson Square and Little Italy in the south, a move that would limit development in the district.

Hudson River Park is home to millions of square feet of unused development rights that exist on commercial piers. The trust plans to eventually sell some of those rights to the owners of upland development sites, though most of those rights are concentrated farther north in the park.

September 21, 2016 12:00PM

Money continues to flood out of China, which should be good news for New York’s real estate market.

August was the 24th straight month of net capital outflows from China, with $51 billion leaving the country after accounting for capital inflows, the Wall Street Journal reported. The pace has slowed a bit from its peak in December and January, when more than net $140 million left the country each month.

Year-to-date, net capital outflows from China total more than $400 million, driving down the Yuan 3 percent against the Dollar. Meanwhile, China’s foreign currency reserves fell by $190 billion this year.

Many savers appear to believe that the Yuan will continue to fall in value, according to the Journal, which gives them an incentive to convert their wealth into dollars.

Chinese savers looking to get their money out of the country have been a staple of New York’s residential real estate market, helping drive up luxury apartment prices to record levels.  This year the high-end market has slowed a little, so it should be welcome news for developers and brokers that Chinese buyers don’t appear to be going anywhere.

The Real Deal reported on Monday that that Chinese institutional investors — such as Kuafu Properties and SMI USA — are increasingly taking on luxury ground-up developments in Manhattan. [WSJ] — Konrad Putzier

September 13, 2016 
By Kathryn Brenzel

Chris Ward and a rendering of Red Hook waterfront redevelopment (credit: AECOM)

Many great real estate projects start out as abstracts — but whether or not AECOM’s vision to transform Red Hook’s waterfront has legs hinges on several crucial details.

The company on Tuesday unveiled a proposal to build up to 45 million square feet of residential space in Red Hook, a plan that would add as many as 45,000 new apartments, 25 percent of them affordable. As part of the proposal, the company also suggested extending the No. 1 train into Brooklyn and adding three subway stops, an undertaking that it estimates will cost $3.5 billion.

Chris Ward, chief executive of AECOM’s Metro New York, is the first to admit the vision is extremely preliminary. During a panel Tuesday organized by the New York University’s Rudin Center for Transportation, Ward repeatedly stressed that the company’s study of the area was in no way a plan, but rather a “framework” designed to inspire conversation. The next step is for AECOM to take the proposal to residents.

“It really is for the community to embrace,” Ward said. “If not, it’ll just be a series of ideas that won’t get realized.”

Other factors also potentially stand in the way. For one, the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey would need to allow its 80-acre Red Hook Container Terminal to be used for the development. The agency has floated shutting down the terminal as part of its efforts to shed its non-core real estate assets, but has not yet embraced AECOM’s vision. A spokesperson for the agency said they were currently reviewing the proposal.

AECOM would likely also need the blessings of the Metropolitan Transportation Authority and City Hall. Ward said both are currently focused on their own projects.

“Sounds like this is in the very preliminary stages of an idea,” Kevin Ortiz, a spokesperson for the MTA, said in an email on AECOM’s proposal. “We look forward to hearing more about it, especially details regarding funding.”

Representatives for City Hall did not immediately respond to messages seeking additional information.

Then there’s the cost of the entire project, which remains unclear. The proposal includes three scenarios for residential development, 25 million square feet, 35 million square feet and 45 million square feet. The biggest option would pay for 45 percent of the proposed subway changes — the extension from Rector Street in Manhattan to Red Hook and three additional stops — work that AECOM reckons will cost $3.5 billion. One official told The Real Deal that $3.5 billion for a tube under the river and three stations is a “remarkably low estimate.”

Ward said that the city is currently focused on the Brooklyn-Queens Connector, but feels the streetcar alone won’t do enough to address the neighborhood’s growing density. He noted the subway extension would take five years, whereas the BQX is expected to take longer (the city’s estimate is 2024). He acknowledged that subways have become associated with massive cost overruns, especially the East Side Access project, which is linking the Long Island Railroad to Grand Central Terminal. The Second Avenue subway expansion — on which AECOM is a contractor — is another notorious example of a long-delayed subway project.

“That [Second Avenue subway] has cast such a pall over whether or not we can build subways efficiently, on time and on budget,” he said. “I hope we haven’t given up on subways. It’s what made America great, they are the best way to connect neighborhoods.”

Ward said that redeveloping Red Hook could help address what he said was a critically low housing vacancy rate (just 3.45 percent in 2014) and help connect public housing to the waterfront.

Michelle de la Uz, executive director of the Fifth Avenue Committee, a South Brooklyn-based nonprofit affordable housing developer, countered that encouraging growth in the neighborhood without first addressing existing inequalities — like the lack of a public high school in Red Hook — would only exacerbate problems of access.

The projected total in the city for 2016 is13,000; last year permits topped 56,000     by Greg David

August 01, 2016
By E.B. Solomont

Eyal Ofer

New York City real estate has had silent investors for as long as developers have been buying and selling property. But as the world economy grows more uncertain and lenders pull back, that quiet money is playing a bigger role in clinching deals here. And, in some cases, it’s getting louder as once-hushed players take on more visible roles. Below is a look at some of the notable private investors bankrolling real estate activity in NYC.

Eyal Ofer/Global Holdings
Estimated net worth: $8.9 billion
Fortune made in: Shipping

Eyal Ofer’s firm Global Holdings has a stake in $2.3 billion worth of New York City real estate, according to Real Capital Analytics. Patriarch Sammy Ofer, who was once Israel’s richest man and died in 2011, made a fortune in shipping in the 1950s, ‘60s and ‘70s. Then, in the 1980s, his son Eyal began leveraging that fortune and investing in New York real estate. The company is best known as a longtime (and quiet) backer of Zeckendorf Development, with stakes in a number of the company’s projects, including its marquee condo 15 Central Park West and its more recent and upcoming towers. But Global Holdings has recently taken on a more visible role, partnering with Rudin Management at Greenwich Lane. After under-the-radar office investments such as 875 Third Avenue, acquired in 2013 with partner Miller Global Properties, Global Holdings bought out Miller for $100 million in 2014 to become the building’s sole owner. In another solo deal earlier this year, Global Holdings picked up 1250 Broadway for $565 million. Ofer, 66, was born in Israel, but currently lives in Monaco. In addition to owning a stake in Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines, Ofer is an avid collector of contemporary art, and his family donated $13 million to the Tate Modern in 2013.

Beny Steinmetz/BSG Capital
Estimated net worth: $1.28 billion
Fortune made in: Diamonds, mining

Born and raised in Israel, billionaire Beny Steinmetz is about as taciturn a real estate investor as they come. While there’s scant evidence of his holdings in New York, he’s a known backer of Ziel Feldman’s HFZ Capital. The now-60-year-old was born into a diamond trading family and in 1978 moved to Belgium, where he learned the trade.  Today he considers himself a citizen of the world — flying on his private jetbetween Tel Aviv, where his family lives; London, where his mining company BSG Resources is headquartered; and Geneva, where Steinmetz maintains a legal residence. (He also has a French passport.) BSGR has a strong — albeit controversial — presence in Africa, where Steinmetz landed lucrative mining contracts in Guinea in 2008 that have been the subject of corruption and bribery probes. In 2014, Steinmetz reportedly sold his stake in Geneva-based Steinmetz Diamond Group to his brother for an undisclosed sum. Layers of corporations shield the true extent of Steinmertz’s holdings, including his stake in BSGR, which is controlled by a trust of which he’s a beneficiary. “I don’t really care what everyone thinks,” he told the Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot in 2013, referring to his reluctance to give interviews or even appear at industry events. “I think I’m balanced. Some people might say I’m cold-hearted.”

Morad Ghadamian

Morad Ghadamian/Marjan International Corp.
Estimated net worth: Unknown
Fortune made in: Carpet imports

Ghadamian, 66, was born in Iran and lives in Manhattan in a $27.5 million co-op at 810 Fifth Avenue. He’s a frequent backer of developer Joe Moinian, a fellow Persian Jew whom Ghadamian counts among his “best friends.” After gamely taking a side role to Moinian when it came to real estate investment, Ghadamian has recently become slightly less obscure. Earlier this year, he acquired a 50 percent stake in Central Park South’s Hilton Garden Inn from Starwood Capital Group, which co-developed the hotel with Moinian. Ghadamian’s son, Daniel, is a principal at Capstone Equities, which is overhauling a former Playboy Club at 5 East 59th Street in Midtown.

Abraham Fruchthandler/FBE Limited
Estimated net worth: Unknown
Fortune made in: Stock market, real estate

A frequent backer and partner of prolific Brooklyn landlord Ruby Schron, Fruchthandler reportedly has a stake in (and helps manage) 25 million square feet of real estate nationally, including 4,000 residential units. An Orthodox Jew like Schron, Fruchthandler’s profile is low and appears to be staying that way, even as he increasingly backs smaller developers. Notoriously press-shy, Fruchthandler invested alongside Schron and the Witkoff Group in the Woolworth Building in 1998. But FBE’s largest known investment is the overhaul of the 6.5 million-square-foot, 16-building complex known as Industry City, a redevelopment project the firm is partnering on with Schron’s Cammeby’s International, Jamestown, Belvedere Capital and Angelo, Gordon.

Bashar Kiwan

Bashar Kiwan/Al Waseet International
Estimated net worth: Unknown
Fortune made in: Media

After launching the first Arabic-language, classified weekly newspaper in Kuwait in 1992, Bashar Kiwan made a fortune by expanding that publication into a media empire, Al Waseet International, which includes newspapers, radio stations, digital platforms and advertising services. Five years ago, the French-Syrian-Kuwaiti businessman turned to real estate. The charismatic and entrepreneurial 49-year-old has strong ties to the Saudi royal family — Sheikh Sabah Jaber Mubarak al Sabah, son of the Kuwaiti prime minister, is chairman of Al Waseet. Kiwan’s biggest New York City investment was reportedly in the Witkoff Group’s Park Lane development, though exactly how much cash he put up is not public. And Kiwan, who lives in Kuwait, is now out of that deal: In April, Chinese conglomerate Greenland Groupreportedly acquired Al Waseet’s stake.

David Cohen/Carlton Associates
Estimated net worth: Unknown
Fortune made in: Family started Duane Reade

The investment arm of the Cohen family — whose brothers Abraham, Eli and Jack Cohen founded the now-omnipresent pharmacy chain Duane Reade in 1959 — has real estate assets valued at $2 billion, according to RCA. Carlton Associates, started by Jack, is now run by his son, David Cohen. In 2014, Carlton partnered with Schron and low-profile investor David Werner to buy the land under 100 West 57th Street for $285 million. In a 2012 deal, Carlton took on a more visible role when it partnered with Werner and real estate investor Joseph Mizrachi to buy a 1.1 million-square-foot Chicago office tower for $350 million — a record that year. Carlton also has a stake in One Court Square in Long Island City.

Michael Dell

Michael Dell/MSD Capital
Estimated net worth: $23.2 billion
Fortune made in: Computers

After launching the personal computer giantDell Inc. from his dorm room at the University of Texas-Austin, Michael Dell became the youngest CEO of a Fortune 500 company in 1992 when he was just 27. Often called a tech industry “wunderkind,” the now 51-year-old waged a fierce battle to take Dell private in a $25 billion deal in 2013. While Dell has been making tech headlines, his family office, MSD Capital, has been investing Dell’s personal fortune since 1999 in car companies, restaurants and retail — alongside real estate holdings valued at about $3.5 billion, according to RCA. For the better part of the past decade, MSD has been co-developing an 865-acre resort in Hawaii, which includes a golf course and Four Seasons hotel. In New York, MSD and Goldman Sachs purchased equity stakes in the Related Companies in 2007 totaling 7.5 percent. Although Dell has no plans to take a more active role in New York City real estate, the firm recently invested in Sharif El-Gamal’s condo at 45 Park Place, as well as Adam America Real Estate’s residential development at 22-12 Jackson Avenue in Long Island City.

Editors comment: it should be noted that after this article appeared, Michael Dell was named as an investor/owner in Andrew Pensons Grand Central Station holdings.

Arthur Becker/Atlantic Investors LLC
Estimated net worth: Unknown
Fortune made in: Tech

A onetime restorer of historic homes and former stockbroker at Bear Stearns, Becker made his fortune buying and selling technology companies. Most recently, the 66-year-old was CEO of web hosting company NaviSite Inc., which he left in 2010. Through his Atlantic Investors LLC, Becker has a stake in $500 million worth of real estate, according to RCA. While he’s quiet as a mouse, he has backed some big projects, including Michael Stern and Kevin Maloney’s 111 West 57th Street. He’s also backing a planned condo at 124 Sixth Avenue, a former carwash, being developed by Maloney’s Property Markets Group and Robert Gladstone’s Madison Equities.

Raymond Gindi/Gindi Capital
Estimated net worth: Unknown
Fortune made in: Retail; owns Century 21 department store

The Gindi family, which started the discount chain Century 21, currently has a stake in nearly $5 billion worth of real estate, according to RCA. Raymond Gindi, who is in his late 40s, is a well-known entity in New York real estate, but is rarely in the spotlight unless it has to do with the retail business started in 1961 by his father, Al, and uncle, Sonny Gindi. But there’s no denying Gindi Capital’s significant influence in commercial real estate. (Fun fact: Cousin Eli Gindi, a onetime owner of the Plaza Hotel’s Oak Room, closed the iconic restaurant in 2011 amid a dispute with then-landlord Elad Group.) In 2012, the family’s investment arm – Gindi Capital — sold a portfolio of 26 buildings (primarily in Manhattan, with a handful in Brooklyn and Queens) for $164 million, and in 2014 it leased a 19,000-square-foot office in Herald Square, from which it now manages its war chest. Gindi’s New York investments include an unknown stake in the Bryant Park Hotel, alongside Rainbow Shops owner Joseph Chehebar and investor Philip Pilevsky, as well as a stake in 490 Fulton Street in Downtown Brooklyn with Crown Acquisitions. The Gindis are also investors in Vornado Realty Trust’s 650 Madison Avenue and Silverstein Properties’ Silver Towers, though they rarely get mentioned in connection with those buildings.