Presenting the Between the Bricks annual Golden Bricks to the best and worst of the city’s slickers:
- Super Swapper: This award goes to Gary Barnett, who dubbed his Eleventh Avenue and West 34th Street office development site One Hudson Yards, thus annoying Related Companies’ Stephen Ross, who is developing the “official” Hudson Yards. This did prompt Related and partner Boston Properties to trade their development site at 46th Street and Eighth Avenue to Barnett, which he had already surrounded, killing any possible project other than his.
- Head-Scratching New BID : The newly formed Hudson Yards Business Improvement District runs from 9th to 11th avenues and West 30th to West 42nd with a few buildings a bit to the east, but excludes the entire western half of the Related Hudson Yards project, which presumably will clean up after itself or become included once developed.
- Family Feud: Vornado Realty Trust agreed to move its prospective and shorter tower at Central Park South a tad so it wouldn’t block Barnett’s Nordstrom Tower views, thereby getting Barnett to give up his garage lease holding up the Vornado tower development.
- Game-Changing Lease: GroupM, for a 516,000 square-foot consolidation at 3 World Trade Center, thus allowing the 2.5 million square-foot tower to obtain financing and keep heading skyward.
- Nautilus Prize: To architect Santiago Calatrava for making the amazing West Concourse into the trachea that will lead to the whale’s chest-like PATH station and fishbowl–like Oculus — and favored location for a Shark-nado movie.
- Street Escape : 57th Street has transformed from tacky theme restaurants to Billionaire’s Row as tall residential towers create an entirely new city skyline and billionaires buy sky-high-priced apartments with bird’s-eye views of Central Park.
- Undercover Buyer: Joseph Sitt, for secretly closing on a city building or retail condo roughly every four days while becoming one of the largest owners in Soho, with tentacles stretching elsewhere.
- Courageous Papal Passage: Pope Benedict XVI resigned Feb. 10. Vornado President and CEO Michael Fascitelli (left) resigned Feb. 27, saying, “Now is the right time to take a break and try something different.” “Different” didn’t last long: He is now looking for investment opportunities.
- Marking Time: Mitch Steir of Studley and his client, Time Warner, pulled together a move to the north tower at Related Companies’ Hudson Yards with nothing officially signed, sealed or delivered.
- Air Waves : Transferable air rights have zoomed in price to $500 a square foot, making them worth more than the dirt below.
- Juicy Investment: SL Green Realty Trust and partner Jeff Sutton paid $32 million for a 49-year lease for 32,000 square feet of retail space in the base of 650 Fifth Ave. at 52nd Street, which is being seized from the Iranians by the Feds. They then paid Juicy Couture $51 million to leave its 17,000 square-foot store, which will be combined with 11,000 square feet on the third floor for the next retailer, which will pay more — much more — in the prime Fifth Avenue swath where ground-floor rents are $2,500 to $3,500 per square foot.
- I’ve Got a Witness: Kushner Cos. and RFR’s purchase of the six-building Jehovah’s Witnesses complex in Brooklyn for $375 million.
- Mod Apple: Forest City Ratner’s under-construction B2 residential project in Brooklyn is making a modular future in the here and now.
- It Girl: Brooklyn has become the place to live, eat, work, play, buy and sell.
- Chinese Chow Down : Soho Properties bought 40 percent of the GM Building at 767 Fifth Ave. for $1.4 billion from Boston Properties, revaluing it to $3.4 billion; Fosun International bought One Chase Manhattan Plaza from JPMorgan Chase for $725 million, and Jynwel Capital bought a piece of the Park Lane Hotel in a $660 million purchase along with Steve Witkoff, Howard Lorber’s New Valley and Harry Macklowe. All three deals were through Skyscraping Queen Darcy Stacom, et al., at CBRE.
- Double-Cross: After being brought in as a partner, American Realty Corp. dissed RXR Realty and purchased Worldwide Plaza itself; the property was being marketed for the George Comfort & Sons group by Douglas Harmon and Adam Spies of Eastdil Secured.
- Chippendale Spinning Top: Eastdil Secured’s Harmon and Spies racked up the $1.1 billion sale of the Sony Building at 550 Madison for a hotel-residential conversion by the Chetrits and David Bistricer, setting off a series of other transactions as Sony moves, and the Wonder Lab is reconfigured.
- Zoning Failure : The outgoing City Council nixed the Midtown East rezoning and set back major office redevelopment for at least a year, losing major tax revenues for the city.
- Rotten Apple: Hunt’s Point Co-op Food Market in The Bronx needs more dough to build an entirely new market with proper temperature controls, but only signed a seven-year renewal that includes minor repairs. This means after being purchased at the market, fruits and vegetables will continue to sit and wilt on the hot cement walkways before being trucked to bodegas in unrefrigerated vans, hurting minority neighborhoods the most.
- End-of-Year Deed : Ziel Feldman’s HFZ Capital purchased 88 Lexington Ave. for $110 million and 301 W. 53rd St. for $197.25 million, both from Westbrook, through Harmon and Spies of Eastdil Secured, along with other residential properties totaling $605 million.
- Inspiring: The Empire State Building finally lit up its entire antenna with colored LEDs that now move to music, dramatically changing the night skyline to rhythm and hues.
And, FINALLY, the:
- Waterford Crystal Ball: Mayor Bill de Blasio’s main job will be not to drop the ball on the city.