2004 remembered as the year of conversion.It seems that 2004 will be remembered as the year when residential was all the rage General Public's All the Rage was released in 1984 by I.R.S. Records. Track listing
When asked what they considered the most significant transactions of the year, several industry insiders mentioned the sales of such trophy properties as the Plaza Hotel The Plaza Hotel in New York City is a landmark 19-story luxury hotel with a height of 250 feet (76 m) and length of 400 feet that (122 m) occupies the west side of Grand Army Plaza, from which it derives its name, and extends along Central Park South in Manhattan. and the International Toy Center and the subsequent plans to convert them to residential use. "There is a big trend of conversions to residential and that whole hotel into condominiums thing is hot right now, a lot of people are getting significant dollars per s/f for that," said Daniel Gohari, a director with the Moinian Group. "It's going to have a good effect on the market." Gohari was especially pleased with the conversion boom downtown, where the disappearance of outdated out·dat·ed adj. Out-of-date; old-fashioned. outdated Adjective old-fashioned or obsolete Adj. 1. office space and an influx of young middle-class families is sure to create a vibrant new neighborhood. "This trend is going to make [downtown] a 24/7 area, which it never was before," he said. "A lot of developers are actively purchasing properties downtown for this reason." David Levy David Levy may refer to:
He thinks the trend will have a significant impact on the market numbers in 2005, tightening the amount of available office space on the borders of midtown mid·town n. A central portion of a city, between uptown and downtown. midtown Noun US & Canad the centre of a town . "The first deal that comes to my mind is the sale of 225 Fifth Ave., the fact that the new owner is going to convert it to residential use and the exodus of office tenants from that building to the surround buildings," Levy said. "And Wein & Malkin's buildings on that block are also likely to be converted to residential. People are starting to think about the Flatiron district as a residential neighborhood. I don't know Don't know (DK, DKed) "Don't know the trade." A Street expression used whenever one party lacks knowledge of a trade or receives conflicting instructions from the other party. if that's positive or negative, but [if it continues] it will impact the market severely." At the same time there were plenty of large commercial transactions in 2004, including the New York-based Moinian Group's purchase of the Sears Tower Sears Tower, Chicago, the world's third tallest building. Until the opening of the 1,483-ft (452-m) Petronas Towers (1997) in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, it was the world's tallest building. Constructed from 1970 to 1974 for Sears, Roebuck & Co. in Chicago and PricewaterhouseCoopers' landmark 800,000 s/f lease at 300 Madison Ave., which in a complex convergence of simultaneous deals, freed up large blocks of space at 1177 Ave. of the Americas, 1301 Ave. of the Americas and 919 Third Ave. "The PricewaterhouseCoopers' lease is significant not only because of its size, but because of what it indicates about the market--it was the single largest block of class A space in midtown and the company absorbed in it in one swoop swoop v. swooped, swoop·ing, swoops v.intr. 1. To move in a sudden sweep: The bird swooped down on its prey. 2. ," said Dean Shapiro, executive managing director of CB Richard Ellis CB Richard Ellis Group, Inc. NYSE: CBG is a multinational real estate corporation currently based in Los Angeles, California, U.S.A.. On December 20, 2006, the corporation, also known as CBRE, completed acquisition of Trammell Crow Co. in a transaction valued at $2. . "And the space they left on the market has fueled some other significant deals." Shapiro also mentioned a number of smaller midtown transactions, including News America's renewal and expansion at 1211 Ave. of the Americas and Fairchild Publications' move to 750 Third Ave. "Part of the New York New York, state, United States New York, Middle Atlantic state of the United States. It is bordered by Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, and the Atlantic Ocean (E), New Jersey and Pennsylvania (S), Lakes Erie and Ontario and the Canadian province of story is being the home to major networks and media companies," he said. "And these deals signal their recommitment re·com·mit tr.v. re·com·mit·ted, re·com·mit·ting, re·com·mits 1. To commit again. 2. To refer (proposed legislation, for example) to a committee again. to the city." However, not everyone is quite so happy about midtown's performance in 2004. While many brokers cite the disappearance of large blocks of space from the market as evidence of its renewed strength. "One issues in midtown is that while rents have risen, a lot of it is the result of the tremendous growth in the upper Fifth Avenue and the Plaza district areas. Because those rents have escalated so fast, they've really skewed skewed curve of a usually unimodal distribution with one tail drawn out more than the other and the median will lie above or below the mean. skewed Epidemiology adjective Referring to an asymmetrical distribution of a population or of data the statistics for the rest of midtown," said Stephen Schofel, executive managing director of Newmark & Company. "The growth in rents for average commodity space has really been modest, while the growth in rents in the A plus space has been significant." Even for Schofel, though, 2004 brought more good news than bad news. "At the end of 2003, there were 36 blocks of space greater than 100,000 s/f in midtown. A year later, as we go into 2005, there are only 29 blocks of space of that size," he said. "In both midtown and midtown south, we've now seen at least six consecutive quarters of positive absorption in the marketplace." |
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