Commercial Real Estate

Apartment residents of SoHo—particularly, the artists of SoHo—are teaming up to call attention to an artist-in-residence zoning law that has existed since 1971, but only in name. Enforcement measures, to say the least, have fallen short.

Foursquare. Tumblr. Google. The stretch of Midtown South from the Flatiron District all the way down to SoHo and TriBeCa is home to some of the country, never mind the city’s, most prolific tech start-ups. As it currently stands, the office and commercial vacancy rate in Midtown South Manhattan is one of the tightest in all of the country at 5.9 percent (a drop from 6.4 percent the quarter before.) However, as emerging tech and information companies continue to plant roots in the neighborhoods and rents continue to skyrocket, many non-profits and arts group are finding it more and more difficult to stay in the area.

In an attempt to stay competitive on an international level, Mayor Bloomberg’s administration is fast-tracking a transformative rezoning plan for the area around Grand Central Terminal. The proposed changes would apply to the area between Fifth and Third Avenues from East 39th Street all the way up to East 59th Street, and the plan would open the door to replacing older buildings with large, ultra-modern high-rises in Midtown Manhattan. Bloomberg feels that the area has become outdated – office buildings in the area are 68-years-old on average – and wants to encourage new construction projects that would fully modernize the district.

Last month, investors from China were called in to refinance the Mandarin Oriental, as investors backed by Switzerland’s Credit Suisse Group decided to withdraw mortgage loans on the Columbus Circle area hotel. Europe's ownership of New York real estate has been on a steady decline since the continent entered its financial crisis, and this recent loss has attributed to removing some of the last New York financiers.

What’s east of SoHo, north of TriBeCa and south of the West Village? Not much, other than an abandoned warehouse at 330 Hudson Street, between Charlton and Vandham Streets. While Rome wasn’t built in a day, new construction in Manhattan can seemingly pop up over night.

With residents of New York City’s Upper West Side taking note of the neighborhood’s steady decline in retail diversity, government officials have issued zoning proposals to stall the expansion of large chain stores.

Last Tuesday night, January 3^rd, beginning around 11:00 PM, a fire broke out in a commercial building in Inwood on 4945 Broadway off 207^th Street. Residents and nearby store workers came outside in the freezing cold to watch the fire blaze. According to a bartender at Piper’s Kilt, a bar across the street from the building, the FDNY arrived roughly ten minutes after the fire began. It took 138 firefighters almost 4 hours to put the fire out. Two firefighters suffered minor injuries.

In 1961, very few people were concerned about the environment, to say the least. That was the year that New York City’s notoriously strict zoning laws were established, and, remarkably, they are still in place today. One of the unforeseen consequences of those laws is that they are now acting as inhibitors to building green-features on new buildings, or even to retrofitting older buildings to meet greener standards. In response to these impediments, the City Planning Commission, led by Chair Amanda Burden, proposed a series of rule changes to the city’s zoning laws, dubbed “Zone Green,” in order to make them more environmentally friendly, and in doing so they are hoping to establish the first comprehensive, citywide effort to make buildings energy efficient.

The world of Manhattan real estate has known for months that the law firm Milbank Tweed, Hadley & McCoy LLP has been in talks with Brookfield Office Properties about leasing 300,000 square feet of space inside the World Financial Center after its current contract runs out. The law firm currently rents office space from JP Morgan Chase at 1 Chase Manhattan Plaza, and its lease agreement is about to expire.