During a June 18 appearance on CNBC’s Squawk Box, Steven Roth, New York real estate kingpin and the chairman and CEO of Vornado Realty Trust, suggested that a President Barack Obama could lead the United States out of its economic imbroglio.

“President Obama comes in, O.K.—that’s not a political prediction by the way, this is just a fantasy—and somehow or other, he does what he says he was going to do. He gets us out of the war,” began Mr. Roth in his heavily inflected New Yorkese.

In Mr. Roth’s imagined course of events—related to a deeply skeptical roundtable of pundits—the future president would use the billions of dollars that aren’t wasted overseas, coupled with increased tax revenues, to pay down the deficit.  read more »

Human hubbub may soon be returning to 200 Fifth Avenue, the so-called Toy Building that once housed dozens of toy makers, but that, aside from four retail tenants, now stands empty.

Landlord L&L Holding Company, which just got legal permission to evict Cipriani, has had a number of prominent visitors lately, according to David Berkey, the firm’s executive vice president.

“Some of the major users mentioned in your July 15 article have been through the building on more than one occasion and expressed definitive interest in joining Grey Global,” Mr. Berkey said, referring to the article in which we listed the handful of firms looking for more than 150,000 square feet in today’s Manhattan market: NBC Universal; HSBC Bank; law firms Fitzpatrick Cella Harper & Scinto, Paul Weiss Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison, and Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe; and banks Allianz, Natixis, and WestLB.  read more »

Never heard of the Olnicks? Aside from industry insiders, pretty much no one had until July 11, when The New York Times revealed that, amid an affordable housing crisis, Congressman Charles Rangel had been hoarding four rent-stabilized apartments in the Olnick’s Lenox Terrace complex in Harlem.

It may be hard to believe that in a city so consumed with itself, so dedicated to narcissism and self-love, money and power, the Olnicks would shun the spotlight. But do a Nexis search on the family name, and aside from some clips in Real Estate Weekly—which faithfully publishes personnel and small lease announcements—you’ll find nary a hit until this month.  read more »

Leon Charney, a 69-year-old developer and attorney whose colorful career has included stints as President Jimmy Carter’s foreign policy adviser and convicted spy Jonathan Pollard’s lawyer, and who now moderates a public affairs show called The Leon Charney Report, is building a hotel near Bryant Park.

Mr. Charney, who had just returned from China when he spoke with The Observer, said he will replace the five-story office building at 120 West 41st Street—now vacant but for the Simply Pasta restaurant on the ground floor—with a $90 million boutique hotel, which will rise “about” 22 floors and contain a bit more than 100 luxury rooms, a spa and a swimming pool.  read more »

A marvelously polymathic family who lives in perhaps the oldest private home on the Upper West Side plans to sell the property and use the proceeds to create a foundation named after a microbe.

Said microbe, Ochromonas danica, traditionally inhabits Danish bogs, and sometimes the odd laboratory, like the one where landlord Thomas Haines, 74, encountered it back when he was a Ph.D. candidate at Rutgers University. He lovingly calls it a “freak” of an organism, one whose unusual flagellar membrane so sparked his fascination with lipid membranes that he named his dog Danica, his daughter Avril Danica Haines and his property holding company Danica Realty. Now, he plans to call his charitable foundation, which he recently registered with the I.R.S., the Danica Foundation.  read more »

The number of firms looking for at least 150,000 square feet in Manhattan, and the number of buildings that can accommodate them, could more or less now each be counted on one hand. Some contend that the number continues to shrink as the economy worsens. Other’s say there’s always a small universe of big players. Either way, brokers say they find themselves chasing after the same few lookers again and again.

The belle of this dreary ball is probably NBC Universal, which is looking for a place to house its new consolidated business operations center, which will include offices for chief executives like Jeff Zucker; a child-care facility; a conference center; a health care and fitness center; and an employee commissary.

And so when Lynn Calpeter, NBC Universal’s chief financial officer, visited Silverstein Properties’ 7 World Trade Center this month, tongues started wagging, particularly since she’s part of a caravan of muckety-mucks that has passed through the angular tower in recent weeks. Even Mr. Zucker, the president and CEO of NBC Universal, has stopped by.  read more »

Take a look at the latest commercial real estate stats, and maybe you’ll take comfort in the fact that Manhattan’s vacancy rate continues to hold steady at around 7 percent. Maybe you’ll console yourself with soothing thoughts about a tighter than expected market proving all those Chicken Littles wrong.

Or maybe you won’t. Maybe you’ll remember that statistics tend to lag behind reality by a number of months. And maybe you’ll remember the shadow space.

You know it’s there. You’ve heard the rumors. Lehman Brothers is said to be shedding space at 1271 and 1301 Avenue of the Americas, and at 399 Park. JPMorgan Chase is said to be shedding at 270 Park Avenue, and at 277 and 237 and 320. There are murmurings about UBS, the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, MetLife, Pfizer and Bank of America. Indeed, the financial industry appears to be contemplating bulimia and coughing up space that it only recently acquired. But look at CoStar, the bible of the commercial real estate industry, and the spaces remain mysteriously absent. This is shadow space.  read more »

Is James Nelson a Pollyanna?

Mr. Nelson, a partner and managing director at Massey Knakal, believes too much is being made of the tribulations in the city’s sexy, trophy-tower, over-$100 million investment sales market. And too little is being made of the relatively healthy, yet decidedly less glam, more modestly priced market in which his firm specializes.

“As far as the percentage of properties that sell under $100 million is concerned, there are so many more sales,” he said. An obvious, yet oft-overlooked, point.

“Clearly everyone’s been following the Macklowe properties,” Mr. Nelson said, referring to recent trophy-tower transactions that included the record sale of the GM Building.  read more »

The Carlyle Group closed Tuesday on the purchase of an interest in the retail condo at 666 Fifth Avenue, the tower that Kushner Companies bought last year for a then-record $1.8 billion, according to a source familiar with the deal.

The Carlyle Group—the mammoth private-equity group that manages $82.7 billion in 60 funds worldwide and recently, with Ashkenazy Acquisition Corp., bought 650 Madison Avenue for $680 million—is buying in partnership with Stanley Chera’s Crown Acquisitions. The 49 percent stake, as reported by Bloomberg News, in the approximately 90,000-square-foot retail portion, which includes a Brooks Brothers and the NBA Store, is valued in the deal at $525 million.  read more »

Under the new leadership of the dashing Billy Macklowe, Macklowe Properties appears to be lumbering ahead with its complicated and complication-ridden Drake Hotel development.

Either that, or Macklowe Properties is busy assembling a more lucrative parcel in the East 50s around Park Avenue to put on the market—Macklowe was reportedly considering selling the mega-site in May, before successfully selling the GM Building to Mort Zuckerman’s Boston Properties for a record-breaking $2.8 billion.

Either way, Audemars Piguet, the sole tenant in 40 East 57th Street, is out. Capping 14 months of negotiations, Macklowe has bought out the remaining 10 years on the Swiss watchmaker’s lease.  read more »