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Archive for the ‘New York News’ Category

From left: Andrew Berman, executive director of Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation and the Chelsea Market

A coalition of neighborhood preservationists and other community groups are stepping up the fight against a plan to expand the Chelsea Market retail and office complex with a petition.

Jamestown Properties, the owners of Chelsea Market, have proposed adding a hotel and separate nine-story office tower on top of the existing land marked building at 75 Ninth Avenue, one of the largest and most successful retail and commercial complexes in New York.

The firm commissioned a study in November 2011, which claimed the proposed expansion would result in more than .6 billion in economic benefits to the city. But opponents of the plan say the expansion would ruin the existing property and create additional problems for a neighborhood that is already facing excessive development.

“These two structures they want to build on top of them would really hurt the integrity of the buildings,” said Andrew Berman, executive director of the Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation. “There’s also a fear that we’re seeing the neighborhood really, really overdeveloped.”

Late last week, the organization launched an online petition to collect signatures from residents opposed to the expansion.

In 2011, Jamestown bought out its partners at Chelsea Market to take control of the property, which has 1.2 million square feet of office and retail space, and is home to companies including Google and the Food Network.

In 2011, Jamestown proposed building an 11-story glass cube, measuring 240,000 square feet, on top of the 10th Avenue side of the existing complex, as well as a 90,000-square-foot hotel on the Ninth Avenue side of the property.

Plans for the commercial expansion were scaled back after opposition from local community groups, who complained that the glass structure was out of character with the existing property.

Community Board 4 held a meeting on the expansion in late January, and another public hearing is scheduled for Thursday evening at the Fulton Auditorium, at 119 9th Avenue and 17th Street, in which further discussion will be held on the proposed expansion.

The project must be approved by the city Department of Planning and the City Council before Jamestown is allowed to move forward with the expansion.

A spokesperson for Jamestown was not immediately available for comment.

The Real Deal New York

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Ian Schrager

Ian Schrager is chairman and CEO of Ian Schrager Company, a hotel and real estate development firm established in 2005. Prior to establishing the company, Schrager was at Morgans Hotel Group, which he cofounded in 1984 with the late Steve Rubell, with whom he created the legendary nightclub, Studio 54, in 1977. Schrager’s more high-profile New York projects include the 2006 redesign of the Gramercy Park Hotel as well as residential properties such as 40 Bond and the Gramercy Park Hotel’s 50 Gramercy Park North condos.

The Real Deal New York

The Steiner family is planning a 52-story, 720-unit tower at Flatbush Avenue and Scheremerhorn Street in Downtown Brooklyn with 50,000 square feet of retail space, the Wall Street Journal reported.

As The Real Deal previously reported, the family acquired the four-parcel site late last year for million, in a deal where a commission lawsuit filed by Massey Knakal Realty Services is ongoing.

Steiner, famous for developing a film production studio at the Brooklyn Navy Yards, plans to invest at least 0 million in the 5 million to 0 million project, and will seek financing for the remaining costs through the “80/20″ subsidized housing program. The developer plans to rent the market-rate units for to per square foot.

Steiner NYC Chairman Douglas Steiner said the planned building, which will rise on the site formerly home to low-rise buildings and bodegas, is another example of the continued shift of the center of Brooklyn south and east of downtown, away from Brooklyn Heights and Park Slope. Named “the Hub,” it will compete with a pair of other 50-plus story residential towers planned for the neighborhood by AvalonBay and the Stahl Organization. [WSJ]

The Real Deal New York

From left: Zhann Jochinke and Eric Barron

[Updated at 8:51 p.m. with comment from Argo] Keller Williams NYC has hired Zhann Jochinke to oversee the brokerage’s day-to-day operations as COO, the firm said. Jochinke joined the Keller Williams NYC in December, but his hiring was kept under wraps due to unspecified “complications” with his previous firm, Argo Residential.

He will have an office at 425 Park Avenue, between 55th and 56th street, where the entire firm is finalizing its move as previously reported by The Real Deal. Only Keller Williams NYC Chairman Ilan Bracha and his team of about 15 brokers will remain at 725 Fifth Avenue, between 56th and 57th streets.

Jochinke, 29, actually attempted to bring the Keller Williams franchise to Manhattan himself about four years ago, and had rounded up capital to pave the way for a launch, he said, but was thwarted by the Lehman Brothers crash and his resulting lack of confidence in the market.

“The model, above the commission split and everything else, is about putting the agent first,” he said. “We want to be the brand behind the agents’ brand, the company behind the their company. That’s what attracted me and probably most of our agents.”

He had been in dialogue with the regional leadership ever since, according to Keller Williams Realty’s regional spokesperson, and again immediately after Bracha launched the Keller Williams NYC franchise early last year. Within weeks he was speaking with Bracha, too.

Jochinke hails from Australia and moved to New York City seven years ago. He said he read the book “The Millionaire Real Estate Agent,” by Keller Williams Realty Chairman Gary Keller and almost immediately began working towards a real estate license. Within a year he took a job with Argo Residential where he has worked for the last six years focusing mostly on 0,000 to .3 million homes, he said. Karen Berman, Argo’s director of sales and the company point person, said there was “no reason” why Jochinke wouldn’t have wanted to announce his move in December and added, “we wish him well.”

Keller Williams NYC has no qualms about elevating someone with relatively limited experience.

“There’s no substitute for intelligence, and he’s probably the smartest person I’ve met in the real estate industry,” CEO Eric Barron said. “He has a tremendous ability to grasp all the moving parts, particularly from a technology standpoint… which is the backbone of almost everything we do today.”

But Barron did not play a role in Jochinke’s hire. In fact, Barron said Jochinke was already affiliated with the firm when he was brought on to replace Adina Azarian, whose is now the executive director of new business, as CEO. Barron said he and Jochinke’s ability to compliment one another from an operational standpoint was ultimately a big reason he took the job 10 weeks ago.

Jochinke compensates for what Barron lacks in familiarity with agent technologies, and still has the “agent’s mentality,” the CEO said, which helps him relate to the firm’s roster of brokers. In fact, Jochinke serves as the president of the Manhattan MLS and as a board member with the Manhattan Association of Realtors.

The Real Deal New York

From left: Ilan Bracha, Jared Seligman, John Burger, Leslie Singer and Cathy Franklin

Sources: Streeteasy.com and The Real Deal. Footnotes: Data is for closed deals filed with the city this week through Friday. The chart only includes sellers’ brokers, because buyers’ brokers’ names are not available in city data or listings. The data does not include deals in contract. To obtain broker information, listing information was compared with sales records filed with the city. Only deals where an individual broker and address can be identified are included. As a result, private sales, listings where an address has not been provided and new development sales by a sales center are not included.

The Real Deal New York

Thad Seely, a stadium development executive with the New York Jets

The New York Jets’ stadium development executive Thad Sheely will leave his position to start a real estate development company based in New York, Bloomberg News reported.

The Jets and the New York Giants built a new stadium,called Metlife Stadium, in East Rutherford, N.J., on Sheely’s watch, and now he’s “ready for [his] next challenge.” The new stadium opened in 2010.

Sheely’s new company will be called Gridworks Development, and will focus on projects in “transitional neighborhoods” and act as an advisor on public-private projects, Bloomberg said. [Bloomberg]

The Real Deal New York

Paul Glickman (top) and Frank Doyle, vice chairmen of JLL, and 1177 Sixth Avenue

Silverstein Properties and California State Teachers’ Retirement System are undertaking a renovation of 1177 Sixth Avenue and chose Jones Lang LaSalle to market the office property’s vacant space.

The 1 million-square-foot Class A office building, between 45th and 46th streets, has approximately 248,500 available square feet across three blocks of space.

A JLL team led by Frank Doyle and Paul Glickman, vice chairmen, will work with the Silverstein Properties team that previously maintained sole management responsibilities since it acquired the property with CalSTRS for more than billion in December 2007. In 2009, the in-house team raffled off Super Bowl tickets to brokers who toured the space, that at that time was soon-to-be vacant.

The ownership tapped Moed de Armas & Shannon Architects to redesign the building lobby and exterior arcade and bring modern amenities to the lobby desk. The project should wrap up by the end of the year, according to JLL. The building was originally designed by Swanke Hayden Connell Architects in 1992. — Adam Fusfeld

The Real Deal New York

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