NYC sees biggest building permit rise since crash | Crain’s New York Business.
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New 11-story, Kohn Pedersen Fox-designed building will rise on First Avenue to house schools of nursing and dentistry, as well as a new bioengineering program. Work to begin in spring.
New York University unveiled designs Wednesday for the new home of its nursing and dental schools, as well as a new bioengineering program. All will be moving to First Avenue at East 26th Street, along what is known as Manhattan’s health corridor. The new facility is part of the university’s ambitious expansion plans dubbed NYU 2031.
The 11-story, state-of-the-art facility, planned for 433 First Ave., will be 170,000-square-feet large and 183-feet high, according to an NYU spokesman. The previous building on the site, which was used for administrative and academic office for the school’s College of Dentistry, was demolished in September.
“A large portion of the building was not used and the building was deteriorating,” said the spokesman.
Construction of the new property is slated to begin in the spring. Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates is designing the exterior, while EYP Architecture & Engineering is working on the interior design.
When the facility is complete, NYU’s nursing school will move from its current home in Greenwich Village. There will also be space for a new multi-school bioengineering program and an expanded dental school. It is slated to open in 2015. NYU declined to say how much the new building will cost, but published reports pegged it at roughly $140 million.
Plans for NYU’s new health-corridor building have drawn little opposition in contrast to those for the school’s expansion in Greenwich Village. The university released the design a day after announcing that it had officially started the public review process to add 3 million square feet to its campus in Greenwich Village and areas around Washington Square Park.
In order to proceed with much of its growth plans there, NYU needs city zoning approvals. NYU had wanted to begin that process, which takes up to seven months, by the end of last year, but at the request of Community Board 2 it decided to postpone the move until after the New Year.
The university’s 2031 expansion plans have been opposed by preservationists and some local community groups in Greenwich Village, who believe that NYU is overbuilding in the neighborhood. A town hall meeting hosted by Community Board 2, Greenwich Village Society for Historic Preservation, Community Action Alliance on NYU 2031 and more than 50 local community groups from Greenwich Village, SoHo, Chelsea and Union Square is scheduled for Wednesday evening. There a number of opponents are expected to speak out against NYU.
Source: Crain’s
Department store will open 160,000-square-foot behemoth at Bay Plaza Shopping Center. Store will be retailer’s second in the borough.
Attention shoppers: A big new Macy’s is coming to the Bronx. The Cincinnati, Ohio-based department store chain has signed on for 160,000 square feet at the Mall at Bay Plaza, a site under construction at the Bronx’s Bay Plaza Shopping Center. The store, expected to open for business by spring of 2014, will take up three floors and be connected to an existing 150,000-square-foot JC Penney, which is currently open on the ground floor of the center.
The new Macy’s will “deepen our presence in the diverse and densely populated New York marketplace,” said Ron Klein, chief stores officer at Macy’s, in a statement. The 850-unit chain currently has one store in Manhattan, two in Brooklyn, three in Queens and one in the Bronx’s Parkchester section. Mr. Klein noted that the new outpost will sell merchandise tailored to the needs of the Bronx neighborhood. Construction is slated to begin this spring.
Developer Prestige Properties is currently in the process of leasing the remaining 470,000 square feet of the Mall at Bay Plaza, which will include a 1,800-car parking garage. Asking rents for the shopping center range from $100 a square foot to $200 a square foot. Prestige Properties is spending about $270 million to develop the Mall. The new construction is expected to create over 1,700 permanent jobs for the area. As part of the existing Bay Plaza Shopping Center, the Mall will bring the center’s total size to 2 million square feet.
On Wednesday, Macy’s, which recently announced it will be spending $400 million to renovate its existing Herald Square flagship, released third quarter earnings. The store raked in a net income for the quarter of $139 million, versus $10 million in the year-earlier period. Sales totaled around $5.85 billion, a 4% rise from last year. Same-store sales, an important measure of a retailer’s health, were up 2.2% in October.
Source: Crain’s New York Business
Activity in first half of year soars 40% over 2010 level and in May and June sets a new record; in good news for tenants, rent increases are still seen as modest.
Leasing activity in Manhattan in the first half of the year totaled 17.6 million square feet, the best six-month performance in 13 years and a 40% surge from the corresponding period of 2010, according to Cushman & Wakefield Inc. Meanwhile, activity in the last two months of the quarter was the strongest on record.
In yet another bullish sign, absorption—which measures the net change of occupied space in a given time—was a positive 3.2 million square feet. That marked the first time that measure has been positive for the first six months of the year since 2007.
“Leasing activity has been pretty impressive,” said Joseph Harbert, Cushman & Wakefield’s chief operating officer for he New York metro region.
All that activity helped shrink the overall average vacancy rate to 9.4% by the end of last month from 10.8% in the same period last year.
The surprising news for landlords—and the good news for tenants–was that despite the surge in deal volumes, the overall asking rents grew a mere 2% to an average of $55.52 a square foot.
“Increases are modest compared to the activity,” said Mr. Harbert. “This is still a relatively good [leasing] opportunity for tenants.”
Brokers at Cushman’s quarterly press briefing suggested several reasons for the disparity. One noted that the 9.4% vacancy rate still favors tenants and that once it hits 8%, which is widely considered a point where there is negotiating equilibrium between landlords and tenants, rents should shoot higher.
Another suggested some landlords were keeping quality space off the market, waiting for the market to further improve so they could fetch even richer numbers. Yet, a third suggested that the economy was still shaky enough where landlords didn’t want to quibble over price, especially not with credit-worthy tenants looking to lease significant blocks of space.
Some sub-markets in Manhattan are already seeing major increases. Mr. Harbert said rents in the Plaza District, the tony enclave favored by hedge funds and financial firms, were growing at twice the pace of the average, up 20% from the market trough.
Rents in the downtown market advanced more than in the other two business districts–midtown and midtown south. They jumped 4.2% to $39.38 a square foot. The market got a big boost from Condé Nast signing a 1 million square foot deal at 1 World Trade Center.
Source: Crain’s New York Business
Despite foes, watered-down project likely to proceed.
Forest City Ratner’s long-delayed, dramatically altered Atlantic Yards project faces two key votes this week on its latest changes. Critics say the modifications will dilute—or erase—the plan’s pledged public benefits.
On Tuesday, the Empire State Development Corp. board is expected to weigh in on a timetable that would put the completion date for the $4 billion, 22-acre project far past the original 2014 target. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority will probably vote the next day on a proposal allowing Forest City to delay delivery of a $100 million lump-sum payment to the MTA for development rights, and possibly reduce the payment amount.
Full article via Crains New York Business
