the Editors of Commercial Property Executive
Manhattan Apartment Sold to Local Investor
A partnership including Kent Swig of Swig Equities L.L.C. has sold a pair of pre-war apartment buildings on Manhattan’s Upper West Side to a locally–based operator of residential and mixed-use properties for $61 million, or about $450 a square foot. Eastern Consolidated both represented the seller and procured the buyer, and also negotiated the financing with iStar Financial on the buyer’s behalf. The two buildings, at 201 West 92nd (pictured) and 200 West 93rd streets, comprise an entire block front on Amsterdam Ave. and include 134 rental apartments and 11 retail stores totaling more than 10,000 square feet. The apartments…
DLC Acquires Skytop Pavilion in Cincinnati, Has $700M to Spend this Year
With more than $700 million in capital in its coffers to spend, privately-held retail real estate company DLC Management Corp. has just made its first purchase of the year, acquiring Skytop Pavilion, a grocery-anchored shopping center in Cincinnati. DLC president & CEO Adam Ifshin told CPN today he could not release the price or the name of the institutional seller because of a confidentiality agreement. DLC, based in Tarrytown, N.Y., acquired the shopping center after three other buyers couldn’t complete the deal. Ifshin said DLC initially passed on the deal because the seller wouldn’t meet its price. “They finally came…
Details Emerge for $90M Canadian Casino
Plans for a new destination casino in New Brunswick, Canada move closer toward realization as developer Sonco Gaming New Brunswick L.P. divulges details of the mixed-use property. The $90 million project will carry the distinction of being the first casino in New Brunswick. The group behind Casino New Brunswick is a joint venture involving Canadian companies Sonco Gaming Inc., Clairvest Group Inc. and Riseley Gaming Inc., and Las Vegas-based Navegante Group Inc. Financing for the project will consist of $54 million of senior bank debt and $36 million in equity. Clairvest and its Clairvest Equity Partners III L.P. fund will…
Longworth: Midwest Needs Strategy to Deal with Globalization
“The good news is that globalization is still fairly new–only a few decades old now,” said Richard Longworth to a packed room in Downtown Chicago this afternoon. “The bad news is that the Midwest is already behind on coping with it.” Longworth (pictured), a former economic and foreign correspondent for the Chicago Tribune and current senior fellow at the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, spoke on how the Midwest as a region has been failing to adapt to global economic change in recent decades, and what political, business and academic leaders here can do to help turn the situation around,…
US Office Market Continues to Slide: Colliers Report
Marking the third quarter in a row of increased vacancies, the slowdown in the demand for office space is not a surprise, Colliers International has announced based on its mid-year national office research report. Total negative absorption for the year now stands at about 5.1 million. In the second quarter, Class A vacancy rates have grown half a percentage point to 12.69 percent, and both B and C class rates have risen to 13.71 percent. “If you just look at Manhattan – year-to-date the negative absorption is about 6 million,” Ross Moore (pictured), executive vice president and director of market…
Report: Mexico’s Foreign-Owned Factories Make Comeback
Mexico’s maquiladoras, foreign-owned factories, have rebounded in recent years as engines of economic growth in the face of overseas competition, especially from China, according to a report by industrial real estate landlord ProLogis. Maquiladoras are typically located in border areas with the United States, and have had a history of impacting the U.S. distribution markets in states adjacent to Mexican manufacturing markets. The reported noted that part of the reason for the recovery of maquiladoras, which were in the doldrums in the early 2000s, has been their shift toward high-valued-added industries, such as aerospace, custom-order electronics and pharmaceuticals. Such industries…
Vegas Airport Awards $1.2B Construction Contract
Las Vegas’s McCarran International Airport has awarded a $1.2 billion construction contract to Perini Building Co. Under terms of the deal, locally-based Perini will build a new terminal building, underground automated transit system and an aircraft ramp. Construction is slated to begin in August on Terminal 3 (pictured), which includes an elevated roadway structure fronting the facility, over roadway pedestrian bridges, among other features. The construction timeline to complete the entire project is estimated at three and a half years. The steel-framed terminal is approximately 1.9 million square feet and will have a basement, three upper levels and roof-level penthouses….
Sale of Historic Omaha Loft Building Typifies Strength of Adaptive Re-Use
Even in this faltering economy, the outlook for renovation and adaptive reuse of historic buildings seems bright. Historical preservation advocates tout the green advantages of reusing older buildings, and the rising cost of construction materials bolsters their case. And the National Park Service, which oversees the nation’s largest program encouraging investment in historic structures, had a banner year last year. In fiscal 2007, the park service approved 1,045 historic building projects, some involving multiple buildings, under the Federal Historic Preservation Tax Credit Incentives Program. In the process, the agency leveraged a record $4.34 billion in private investment in such projects….
Shoe Pavilion Files for Bankruptcy
Shoe Pavilion Inc. and its subsidiary Shoe Pavilion Corp., have filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The Sherman Oaks, Calif.-based retailer filed its petition in United States Bankruptcy Court for the Central District of California-San Fernando Valley Division and will continue to operate the business as “debtors-in-possession.” The company operates more than 115 stores nationwide, mainly in the West, which will remain open despite the filing. Court filings showed that the retailer had $61 million in assets against more than $25 million in liabilities. Last month, Shoe Pavilion received a notice from the NASDAQ stock market that the company’s stock price…
Trio of Leading Retail Names Now Under One Roof with Closing of Hudson’s Bay Deal
NRDC Equity Partners has wrapped up its acquisition of Hudson’s Bay Co., which is, at 338 years old, the oldest continuing operating company in North America, as well as the largest department store chain in Canada. With the completion of NRDC’s purchase of Hudson’s Bay from True North Retail Investments, NRDC created a new holding company that combined its Lord & Taylor, Fortunoff and designer and manufacturing entity Creative Design Studios under one umbrella with Hudson’s Bay. NRDC and Hudson’s Bay–which owns The Bay, Zellers Home Outfitters and Fields chains–have history; the private equity firm previously held a minority stake…