Real Estate

Avi Schick, the downstate president and chief operating officer of the Empire State Development Corporation for the past two years, will leave his job this week. Mr. Schick emailed a letter on Monday evening to colleagues announcing his departure (a copy of the letter is below).

Mr. Schick's departure comes more than seven months after the Paterson administration announced he would resign his position; in May, the state announced he would leave in September.

At the ESDC, Mr. Schick, once a top prosecutor in the state attorney general's office under Eliot Spitzer, oversaw state involvement in projects such as Atlantic Yards in Brooklyn, the development of Governors Island, and Columbia University's West Harlem expansion.  read more »

Private equity firm sues Kent Swig, alleging $39 million in loan defaults and fraudulent claims about Sheffield57 stake. [TRD]

Sign of the times, big-time: Two Plaza condos listed for below purchase prices. [TRD]

Mmmm... Boulud. Daniel will host beer-pairing dinners later this month. [Eater]

The Four Seasons Restaurant turns 50, offers menus like it's 1959. [Eater]

A rundown of the slowdown on Rudin and St. Vincent's O'Toole building plans in the West Village. [Architect's Newspaper]

Bob Knakal on the "healthiest segment" of the investment sales market today and other early '09 realities. [Massey Knakal Reel]

Report: Of the 1.3 million city residents who earn $13 per hour or less, almost one in seven work in retail. [Gotham Gazette]

Heliport on far West 30th Street starting to really irk Upper West Siders. [CityRoom]

These guys will get you ripped tonight. [NY Times]

"Our so-called 'investment' has kept us house-poor and chronically overwhelmed for what we laughingly call the 'prime' of our lives. And unless someone gives us, oh, say, half a million dollars, it will never get any better. Needless to say, we love this pile of wretched wood and pipes with a passion so tender that to gaze upon it sometimes brings tears to our eyes, at least until a piece of woodwork or roofing falls off in plain sight." [Brownstoner]

Count it! Madison Square Park wins 2008 Curbed Cup. Carry on. [Curbed]

9:30 a.m., the Landmarks Preservation Commission holds a public hearing on proposed changes for landmarked properties. 1 Centre Street, 9th floor. Agenda and info on attendance here (PDF).

10:30 a.m., the City Council's Finance Committee meets regarding, in part, the grace period for payment without interest of real property taxes. Committee room of City Hall. More info here.

6 to 8 p.m., the New York Association of Realty Managers' School of Property Management hosts a class on "Contract Law for Construction and Services." 500 Eighth Avenue. Fee: $240. Info and registration at www.nyarm.com.

The late Araxia M. Buckhantz's two-bedroom sprawl at the massively proper 834 Fifth Avenue is the kind of perfect little chunk of New York real estate that can make a very important and normally staid uptown broker cackle with excitement. "I absolutely am wild about this apartment," one agent who auditioned for the listing told The Observer last month. “I’d do anything to handle it."

Back then, three sources had said the auditioned brokers included, "Brown Harris Stevens’ Ann Jeffery (once a Harper’s Bazaar editor); Corcoran’s Leighton Candler (who is listing the Brooke Astor duplex); Serena Boardman at Sotheby’s (listing Aby Rosen’s $75 million limestone mansion); Stribling’s bow-tied Kirk Henckels (listing a floor of the old Nelson Rockefeller triplex at 810 Fifth Avenue); and Caroline Guthrie (reported to be taking co-ownership of Edward Lee Cave’s boutique brokerage, where she’s president)."

Reached on the phone just now, Buckhantz's daughter told The Observer that the estate has found its broker: Ms. Jeffery. "I met with a lot of wonderful realtors. I don't want to comment negatively about anybody else," she said, when asked why she made the choice. "No, I don't want to get into this. I don't want to."  read more »

Gramercy Park's only rental building to go condo. [TRD]

Contractor involved in last March's fatal East 51st Street crane collapse indicted on homicide charges. [CityRoom]

Brownsville New York's most murderous neighborhood. [Daily News]

Contractor charged with manslaughter in August 2007 Deutsche Bank fire continues to get public dollars through affiliates and consultant work. [Daily News]

Zar Property has snapped up another diminutive and lovely Soho building, this one an eight-story commercial edifice at 64 Wooster Street for $12.65 million.

Zar acquired the deed from former landlord William Hahn on Dec. 11, according to recently available city records.

Zar Property’s Dario and David Zar are apparently among those who think the downmarket is the time to buy, and who have the means to do so.  read more »

The relatively few unsold condos in One Hanson Place in Fort Greene are up for rent, according to Brownstoner. Nineteen units are asking between $3,400 and $4,900 monthly through condo marketer Stribling.

Now, if they could only rent out One Hanson's retail as well...

From the Journal's Jennifer Levitz this morning: "Support for property-tax rollbacks is building from Arizona to New York, fueled by angry homeowners in some locales who are seeing rising tax bills despite plunging home prices. ... New York City boosted property taxes by 7% effective Jan. 1, and other towns in the state are also sending out higher bills, even as Gov. David Paterson and some legislative leaders are supporting a recent report that recommended a 4% statewide cap in property-tax increases. A commission empaneled by Gov. Paterson's predecessor called for the cap in response to concern that the state's levies -- among the highest in the nation on property -- were curbing growth and encouraging migration."

Oh, it's ugly out there for commercial real estate and its investors. The Times' Vivian Marino ran down the national picture over the weekend, including this dismal statistical gem about '08 investment sales nationwide:

From January through December, there were just 1,410 transactions nationwide, valued at $49.3 billion, versus 4,410, valued at $207.2 billion, for the corresponding period in 2007, according to the latest data from Real Capital Analytics, a research company. It predicted that sales would total $53 billion to $55 billion for all of 2008, further below a recently reduced forecast of $61 billion.

At the same time, demand for offices has softened as companies have cut back or consolidated operations; many of them are already subleasing space that they no longer need. Office vacancies nationwide rose to around 13.5 percent by mid-December from about 12.5 percent, on average, in 2007, according to Reis Inc., another research company.

Part of the fallout from ebbing demand, of course, is falling rents: Ms. Marino notes that in Manhattan, "rents are expected to plunge 10 to 20 percent by 2010, and nationally by 5 to 15 percent, according to Cushman & Wakefield..."  read more »

Author Michael Lewis and hedge fund manager David Einhorn in The New York Times over the weekend on the genesis of the current crisis: "Our financial catastrophe, like Bernard Madoff’s pyramid scheme, required all sorts of important, plugged-in people to sacrifice our collective long-term interests for short-term gain. The pressure to do this in today’s financial markets is immense. Obviously the greater the market pressure to excel in the short term, the greater the need for pressure from outside the market to consider the longer term. But that’s the problem: there is no longer any serious pressure from outside the market. The tyranny of the short term has extended itself with frightening ease into the entities that were meant to, one way or another, discipline Wall Street..."