News

The McSam Hotel Group is betting that it’s recent $56 million acquisition of two properties in Lower Manhattan–and its plans to develop a new hotel on the sites–will capitalize on a growing demand for hotel space in the area.McSam purchased 6 Water St and the adjacent 32-38 Pearl St. in February, according to the New York Post. The 8,300-square-foot site fronts on three streets and provides 125,000 build able square feet. According to Alan Miller, a senior director and principal with Eastern Consolidated, which brokered the transaction, the $56 million purchase price translates to $448 per square foot of buildable…

Cushman & Wakefield plans to relocate its headquarters to 1290 Avenue of the Americas, a class A office tower located in New York City, the company said today. The company currently occupies approximately 155,000 square feet on nine floors at 51 West 52nd StreeIn a 15-year deal, Cushman signed a lease for 156,282 square feet at 1290 Avenue of the Americas, located between 51st and 52nd Streets. The firm will occupy the entire seventh floor, along with portions of the eighth and ninth floors. The company’s vice chairman Franklin Speyer and senior director Amy Fox led the firm’s site search…

An entity called 383 Madison L.L.C. has filed suit against Bear Stearns & Co. and JPMorgan Chase & Co., asserting that it owns the land on which Bear Stearns’ New York City headquarters stands, and that it has the right to make the first offer to buy the building. The suit was filed in New York State Supreme Court yesterday, according to various media reports. When JPMorgan offered to acquire Bear Stearns, the deal included an option to buy the Bear Stearns building for $1.1 billion, regardless of whether the acquisition went through. Now JPMorgan plans to move its investment…

San Diego mayor Jerry Sanders and Blackwater Worldwide, a security contractor whose armed personnel in Iraq have been involved in several controversial incidents, are embroiled in a skirmish over what perhaps should have been a very routine matter: a building permit in an industrial area. The San Diego Union-Tribune reported Wednesday that Sanders has decided that a training center Blackwater wants to develop inside a leased 61,600-square-foot warehouse in a business park near the Mexican border will require a full public review by the city council and the planning commission. The permit application had already passed a review by city…

Fashion house Versace has been tapped to design the interior of the Vita Tower in Panama.Versace Design will team with architect Alfonso Pinzon Mendez to design the interiors of the private residential high-rise in Panama City. Versace brands will be featured in the building’s common areas, which include a spa. To date, Versace Design has worked on a limited number of luxury developments, most notably the Plaza Hotel in New York. The Vita Tower is being developed by firms Grupo Attie, Consorio General and Grupo H. The development team is responsible for numerous high rises in Panama City, including Yoo…

Kite Realty Group Trust has arranged a long-term ground lease with the University of Notre Dame and acquired land to begin the first phase of a 24-acre mixed-use project near the college’s South Bend, Ind., campus. The first phase of the development–dubbed Eddy Steet Commons–is expected to cost about $70 million and will include 90,000 square feet of ground-level retail and restaurants on both sides of Eddy Street; 75,000 square feet of Class A office space on three floors above a building to be constructed at Eddy Street and Angela Boulevard; 266 rental apartments in buildings along Eddy Street and…

ProLogis has leased 194,000 square feet of distribution space to Guangzhou Hutchison Logistics Co., the company said today. Hutchison Logistics has leased warehouse space at ProLogis Park Sanshan, a master-planned industrial park located in Guangzhou, China. The company will operate the facility as a regional distribution center for BMW, shipping automobile parts throughout the Pearl River Delta area.”Guangzhou is a burgeoning city, with a rapidly growing population and economy,” Ming Mei, president for ProLogis in China said in a release today. “It is a key distribution hub for our customers due to its location in the Pearl River Delta, providing…

An 800,000-square-foot distribution facility developed by industrial real estate giant ProLogis near Chicago has won LEED-CI (Commercial Interior) Gold certification from the U.S. Green Building Council. According to ProLogis and the building’s tenant, Kraft Food, the structure is the largest LEED-CI Gold in the world. The distribution center, located in Morris, Ill., southwest of Chicago, was completed in the first half of 2007. More recently, ProLogis and Kraft together completed the improvements necessary to win the gold certification. Among other sustainable design features, the building includes fluorescent lighting with multi-level lighting controls, which results in a 60 percent reduction in…

ColoSpace, a provider of datacenter space, has leased about 16,200 square feet of a datacenter facility in Waltham, Mass. The space, a mid-sized deal in highly compact world of datacenters, represents ColoSpace’s sixth lease in the region, and comes at a time when datacenter space is harder to come by, according to industry specialists. The facility (pictured) serves local firms needing high-availability Internet access, along with high-density electrical capacity. ColoSpace currently manages several thousand servers, in addition to providing space and power for many more non-managed, customer-owned servers that located in private cabinets and cages within the company’s six existing…

Delavan Resort Holdings L.L.C. has just received the green light from the City of Delavan Planning Commission to progress to the next phase of the $390 million redevelopment of Lake Lawn Resort, an upscale leisure destination in Delavan, Wis., 10 miles west of Lake Geneva. The latest phase of the expansion endeavor will yield a 130-unit luxury condominium complex, the Villas at Harbor’s Edge. Delavan acquired the 130-year-old Lake Lawn Resort, located on 258 acres two hours from Chicago and 45 minutes from Milwaukee, for nearly $32 million in 2004, and commenced its multi-phase expansion plan the following year. When…