The roof of 255 Greenwich Street. (Jack Resnick & Sons)
Jack Resnick & Sons has put the finishing touches on a two-level, 20,000-square-foot green roof by FXFOWLE Architects and Rally Restoration at 255 Greenwich Street, Commercial Observer has learned.
The sedum grass plantings atop both a mechanical platform and the 14-story building's top floor will prevent storm water runoff, help insulate the structure, reduce pollution and greenhouse gas emissions and help cool the 1987 building during summer months.
The property, which is near the World Trade Center on the full block between Greenwich Street, Park Place, Murray Street and West Broadway, joins installations like a 200-foot green wall at 401 East 80th Street and two other green roof creations in the Resnick portfolio at 250 Hudson Street and the Symphony House residences at 235 West 56th Street, Jonathan Resnick, the company's president told Commercial Observer.
“This project positions our building at 255 Greenwich for greater performance both near- and long-term, and represents our firm’s commitment to sustainability,” Mr. Resnick said in a prepared statement. “As a result, we are creating a more sustainable environment for not only our tenants, but the downtown community at large. We are proud to improve this important asset, as Lower Manhattan continues to grow stronger than ever before.”
Company officials declined to state the cost of the new roof, but such projects usually cost roughly $25 per square foot to install, according to the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Green roofs usually cost more to install than traditional coverings (the Resnick roof calculates out to $500,000, based on the EPA figures), but they more than make up for the difference in upfront costs through energy bill savings, the agency notes. Resnick's new roof will net the building a "nominal premium" over its lifespan, Mr. Resnick said.
"These green roofs will last a lot longer than a standard roof," he said, noting the functional covering's ecological qualities. "You should get a longer life out of the membrane."
Online advertising company Intent Media is relocating to nearly 35,000 square feet in a Jack Resnick & Sons Hudson Square office building, Commercial Observer has learned.
On Monday, Intent Media signed a four-year, 34,942-square-foot lease comprising a portion of the ninth floor and the entire 10th floor at the nine-story, 481,184-square-foot building at 315 Hudson Street, according to Brett S. Greenberg, a managing director at Jack Resnick & Sons. Mr. Greenberg and Dennis Brady represented the landlord in-house. The asking rent was $50 per square foot.
Sacha Zarba of CBRE and Steven Marvin of Olmstead Properties represented the tenant in the transaction. Messrs. Zarba and Marvin didn't immediately respond to requests for comment.
The building is 100 percent leased. Other technology, advertising, media and information, or TAMI, tenants in the building include TED Conferences and online retailerModa Operandi, the latter which CO previously reported.
The building at 315 Hudson is both LEED- and Energy Star-certified and the Resnicks are planning a major redevelopment of the property in 2018 which will feature new and upgraded building infrastructure and mechanical systems, additional floor area for new rooftop offices, a renovated lobby and a new landscaped usable green roof.
“This transaction speaks volumes about the growing desirability of the Hudson Square neighborhood, and, more specifically, the emergence of 315 Hudson Street as one of the top destinations for creative tenants in New York City," Mr. Brady said in prepared remarks.
During the back and forth at this morning's Commercial Observer breakfast, Jonathan Resnick, president of Jack Resnick & Sons revealed his big fantasy for Downtown Manhattan. (He even brought props with him!) And Jessica Lappin of the Downtown Alliance also chimed in. Check it out:
A few days after Superstorm Sandy in 2012 Jonathan Resnick was at 199 Water Street, assessing. “It was the Wild West down there,” he recalled. Eight-million gallons of water; disaster recovery experts randomly handing out cards; building owners and tenants trying to make sense of it all. “There was a real feeling of helplessness. There was nothing to do but stand, arms crossed, watching the water flow.”
After hours of watching, the president of Jack Resnick & Sons began to walk. He walked down South Street to 55 Old Slip to 125 Broad Street, where he encountered John Santora. The CEO of Cushman & Wakefield was doing what everyone else was doing: watching the water.
“You can’t fight the water. You have to adapt,” said Mr. Resnick. “In the Netherlands they live with it. If it’s going to come, it will come. We do know water levels are rising.”
New federal flood maps, expected to take effect in 2016, will place some 71,500 New York City buildings—532 million square feet of interior space—in the 1 percent annual chance floodplain, the majority of which are in Zone A, where waves above three feet are not expected.
But Sandy shook everyone. After the storm, Jack Resnick & Sons, like its peers, reinforced and reconfigured its properties. At 199 Water Street, switchgear was moved to the third floor; telecommunications and generators went to the fourth; flood barriers were purchased to protect the loading dock and the rear lobby, which faces the East River. “Short of putting a moat around the building, we’ve done a lot.”
That may sound silly or ancient, but exterior-surrounding barricades are now part of most everyone’s plan. They’re not digging trenches, of course, but they are acquiring fences. Namely: AquaFence, the storable, easily deployable and removable, FM Approved, ground-level perimeter protection that’s now part of more than 25 buildings below 14th Street. There was no market traction for AquaFence before Sandy. (See video at the bottom to hear MHP's Norman Sturner exulting the AquaFence installed at 180 Maiden Lane.)
“Flooding has been the one thing people haven’t taken seriously, yet floods exceed fire in annual damage costs,” said Adam Goldberg, director of New York operations for AquaFence, the New Jersey-based company established in Norway in 1999. “Every other day you see a story about rising sea levels and storms getting stronger. This is a relatively cheap way to protect a building. No retrofitting. No reconstruction.”
It takes four people one hour to set up 100 linear feet of four-foot-high fence, all of which fits in the back of a pick-up truck. Compare that to the four hours it takes the same four people to set up 12 feet of sand bags, which need an 18-wheeler to be transported. Also, noted Mr. Goldberg, they’re not as effective. Here’s the science: the weight of water is two times the pressure of horizontal force. “You know how a baby pool full of just a few inches of water is impossible to pick up?” explained Mr. Goldberg. The higher and stronger the water, the harder the fences are to knock over.
Flood elevation levels determine necessary fence height (2 Water Street and 180 Maiden Lane, for example, have seven-footers). AquaFence panels come in sizes that are 4-by-7 feet or 7-by-4 feet, which fit into the largest crates that can ride a flatbed into the city (en route to a building’s basement). Connected by PVC canvas, the approximately 200-pound panels are made of marine-grade laminate (waterproof plywood), aluminum and stainless steel.
“This is part of the solution. AquaFences stop water from entering at street level. The key to flood mitigation is to be able to pump out faster than water gets in.”
The barricading of Lower Manhattan is bigger than individual buildings.
Last year the Department of Housing and Urban Development gave the city $355 million to implement an integrated flood protection system from East 23rd Street to Montgomery Street on the Lower East Side. The system, influenced by an award-winning design concept of a 10-mile, U-shaped barrier of panels disguised as parks and art, is the project of the mayor’s year-old Office of Recovery and Resiliency.
Construction is in the early stages and is expected to be complete by 2017. The ORR is seeking money to fund other sections, which will run down to the Battery and up as far as West 42nd Street.
Last week the city announced they received $8 million to design and build flood protection for Battery Park and another $6.75 million to create a system complementing the one in progress on the Lower East Side. This is just one of the city’s efforts towards a comprehensive, citywide resiliency plan that includes a number of short-, medium- and long-term coastal protection measures, said Amy Spitalnick, a spokeswoman for the city.
And it’s not just buildings in the lowest lying areas bulking up their water programs.
“We found out that the intersection [of Fulton Street and Broadway] is the highest in Lower Manhattan: 38 feet above sea level,” said David Berkey of L&L Holding Co., owners of 222 and 195 Broadway, both of which were “bone dry” to their lowest level after Sandy (and 222 Broadway even had power thanks to its generator). “But security procedures have been beefed up, and tenants will know if buildings are opened are closed.”
The storm’s effects also adjusted the company’s acquisition strategy. “Water concerns are now on the checklist. They might not deter a purchase but they’re considered. Could machine rooms be moved to a higher floor?”
That question was asked by many owners, if not every, in the days following the storm. (At Pier 17, for example, all base buildings systems have been raised above the ground levels.)
It’s an about-face for some who had been told the opposite a decade earlier.
“After 9/11 it was recommended to move all equipment, things that had been spread out across other floors, to the basement,” said Edgar Westerhof of Arcadis’ Water Management Group, specifically talking about the Verizon buildings at 140 West and 104 Broad Streets. Arcadis employs best practices from the Netherlands, where the company’s headquarters are located, to its work around the world. The 125-year-old company was hired by a number of New York businesses to help buildings clean up, recover and implement flood protection solutions.
“It was like entering a war zone the week after Sandy when water was pumped out of basements,” said Mr. Westerhof. “Sea water really eats its way through equipment. The damage after the water is gone is very impressive.” He biked Manhattan the day before and the day after the storm, taking photographs of many sites that later became projects, like those in the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation.
FEMA granted $1.7 billion to Arcadis to implement its plan for the complicated nine-acre Bellevue Hospital, developed over several decades with a lot of underground connectivity. The proposal includes incorporating retrofitted solutions into the existing building fabric. It takes time, said Mr. Westerhof, citing drainage pipes, sewers and possible water entrance points.
Each building within the site is considered as a separate entity to ensure complete flood proofing, not just quick fixes.
“In general all of Downtown is much better prepared to deal with water. The vast majority of buildings in the at-risk elevations has purchased systems to reduce the risk of water infiltration while also moving and/or sealing critical equipment,” said Erik Horvat of Fosun Property Holdings. The company’s 28 Liberty (then still known as Chase Manhattan Plaza) did not take on water due to its location and elevation. The building has tremendous generator capacity, added Mr. Horvat.
Further, he said, office tenants face a much lower risk of extended disruption in the event of another weather-related event of this nature due to telecommunications upgrades. He referenced Verizon’s equipment location move and the replacing of 70 percent copper network (rendered useless once the storm waters penetrated the conduits below street level) with 100 percent fiber.
“Lower Manhattan now has the fastest, most advanced network in the country, an attractive by-product of the required upgrades,” said Mr. Horvat.
This testimonial is an inadvertent “thank you” to Arcadis as well—a sentiment shared by Mr. Horvat’s peers.
“Tenants are O.K.,” said Mr. Resnick. “There isn’t an exodus by any stretch of the imagination. There have been a lot of deals.”
Interpublic Group of Companies has signed a lease for an additional 4,011 square feet at Jack Resnick & Sons’ 250 Hudson Street in Hudson Square, bringing the company’s total footprint at the property to over 50,000 square feet.
The company will take the extra space on part of the third floor at the building, the landlord told Commercial Observer, for three years. The property, which has 16 stories and is comprised of 400,000 square feet, sits at the entrance of the Holland Tunnel.
“We are delighted that this prestigious media agency continues to expand at 250 Hudson Street, which is widely recognized as this area’s trophy asset,” said Jonathan Resnick, the president of Jack Resnick & Sons, in prepared remarks.
Jack Resnick & Sons’ Dennis Brady and Brett Greenberg represented ownership in-house.
JLL’s Robert Romano represented IPG in the transaction.
"The company has been growing and they needed space for expansion. The building was very helpful in giving the expansion space," Mr. Romano told CO.
The asking rent was $72 per square foot.
IPG currently occupies the entire fourth floor and part of the third and seventh floors at the building. Other tenants at the property, which underwent a $40 million, full-building renovation in 2008, include Daniel J. Edelman, American Express and Corbis Corporation. Jack Resnick & Sons bought the building in 1968.
The City of New York has renewed its lease for the entire building, or approximately 100,000 square feet of office space at 2322 Third Avenue between East 126th and East 127th Streets, a property that is owned by Jack Resnick & Sons.
According to a press release issued by the landlord, the city has signed a 20-year renewal deal at the five-story property, which was built by the firm in 1973.
New York City agencies occupying the property include the Human Resources Administration, the Administration for Child Services, Child Care Center and the Department for the Aging Beatrice Lewis Senior Center. The child care center and the senior center have operated in the building since 1973. The facilities provide services to roughly 125 preschool children and 125 seniors daily in East Harlem.
“Renewing this long-term relationship with the City of New York at 2322 Third Avenue will ensure that these agencies will continue to provide vital services to this neighborhood for many years to come,” said Jonathan Resnick, the president of Jack Resnick & Sons.
Jack Resnick & Sons’ Dennis Brady and Brett Greenberg represented the building owner in-house.
“We built the building for the city years ago, back in the ‘70s,” Mr. Brady said. “I’ve been here since ‘76 and it was before my time. This is the second time it has been renewed and extended.” He did not disclose what the city was paying for rent at the site.
Cushman & Wakefield’s Robert Giglio and JRT Realty’s Ellen Israel represented the City of New York. Ms. Israel declined to comment on the deal. Mr. Giglio did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
New York Midtown Orthopedics is consolidating its offices to an entire floor of 485 Madison Avenue, Commercial Observer has learned.
The medical practice inked a deal for 16,000 square feet on the eighth floor of the Jack Resnick & Sons building, according to a source familiar with the deal.
Asking rent was $55 per square foot, according to the source.
Fran Delgorio and Dennis Brady represented the landlord in-house, while Kirill Avoztsev and James Wenk of JLL represented the tenant.
Mr. Brady, via a spokeswoman, said the new tenant was a popular practice, and was drawn to the location’s proximity to mass transit. A JLL spokesman did not immediately return a call for comment.
It won’t be the only medical office in the building, since David B. Samadi, M.D. chief of robotics and minimal invasive surgery at Mount Sinai School of Medicine, leases 8,179 square feet on the 21st floor, as CO has previously reported. Accounting and advisory firm Janover moved into the building earlier this year, after it inked a deal last October for more than 14,000 square feet.
Last week, as we were conducting the final interviews for Power 100, we got on the phone with one of the city’s bigwigs to ask him what he had been up to over the last year. He used the opportunity to list every grievance he held against the names on last year’s Power 100—one by one.
The call lasted 45 minutes, approximately half an hour of it devoted to trashing last year’s rankings.
One name we put in the 20s was way too high for such a small-timer. Another was a terrific broker, but how powerful is a broker, really? One name couldn’t really be considered a great power broker in New York—New Jersey, maybe. And, dammit, why was our interviewee so frickin’ low?
In exasperation our friend finally barked, “I don’t know how you define power!”
Well, we replied, that’s the $64,000 question.
As we embarked on this year’s Power 100, the first thing we asked ourselves was what was the story of the last year?
Certainly, talking to any broker or property owner about the state of the market, you sense a certain hesitation that you didn’t get last year. The market is softening, they say. The crazy overheated hunger for $90 million condominium units is finally cooling. Cap rates are too low. The loss of 421a makes it impossible to build any new construction.
All fair arguments.
But despite all of this, one couldn’t help but notice a penchant for the big, crazy, smash-all-records deals.
The biggest of these deals was the $5.46 billion sale of Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village to the Blackstone Group and Ivanhoé Cambridge.
However, that was just two properties trading hands. Blackstone made another massive bet when it, and Wells Fargo, purchased General Electric’s commercial real estate loan portfolio for $23 billion.
Blackstone’s global head of real estate, Jonathan Gray, certainly hasn’t shrunk from a challenge. If anything, he has stepped up and set the tone. It was the reason we ranked him No. 1 this year.
Across the street from Hudson Yards in a building that Related Companies uses as office space is a countdown clock to its city-within-a-city. Every day this visionary project gets closer to reality. Stephen M. Ross, Jeff T. Blau and Bruce A. Beal, Jr. have certainly earned a No. 2 place on our list.
In a normal year, SL Green Realty Corp.’s purchase of 11 Madison Avenue for $2.29 billion from the Sapir Organization and CIM Group would have been the deal of the year. But we’re not sure if this was even the most significant thing SL Green has done. It’s also working on its big, visionary plan for One Vanderbilt, the 1.6-million-square-foot tower across from Grand Central Terminal. It seems only right that SL Green’s Marc Holliday and Andrew Mathias should get the No. 3 spot.
This year’s list is definitely somewhat skewed to the people who made big bets on a grand vision.
Sometimes we’re not sure how—or even if—the vision will be fully realized. Hopes rose last year when Bjarke Ingels unveiled his design for 2 World Trade Center, and Silverstein Properties announced that it had secured News Corp. and 21st Century Fox as an anchor tenant, only to be deflated when Rupert Murdoch announced that they were pulling out of the deal. But Silverstein Properties head Larry Silverstein is left with a pretty spectacular design. And he’s on the hunt for a golden tenant who can take several hundred thousand square feet of space.
Some names on this list have the power to build cities. Some have the power to persuade tenants to move to some unheralded corner of Gotham. A few have the power to shape municipal or state budgets. But they all share a grand vision of real estate and the city.
Back when Manhattan’s Meatpacking District still fit the literal description of its name, cold storage facilities lining the city’s westernmost streets from West 14th Street southto Gansevoort Street, the Elghanayan family—which was quietly but surely making a name for itself as one of the most influential real estate developers in the city—had just purchased a block-through building at 95 Horatio Street.
The property, which occupied the entire block between 10th Avenue, Gansevoort Street and Washington Place, was slated for redevelopment, but the Elghanayans ran into a speed bump.
“Their engineer said to them, ‘If you start work now, the building will crack and there’s nothing you can do about it,’ ” Andrew (Andy) Singer, the founder, chairman and chief executive officer of what is now called Singer & Bassuk Organization, recalled from his Third Avenue office. “ ‘You have to let this building thaw.’ ”
95 Horatio Street (Photo: CoStar Group).
Literally thaw. The family had purchased the property from Manhattan Refrigeration Company in 1980, and the structure had to sit and defrost before construction could commence.
“They left it for a year, or whatever it was—a long period of time, particularly if you’ve made an investment and you can’t do anything with it,” Mr. Singer said.
Mr. Singer, who was just over 10 years into his career as a debt broker at the time, went on to finance the original mortgage on the building—city records show $12.8 million from Citibank—and refinanced it over and over again. When his son Scott Singer joined the family firm after college in the 1990s, he went on to arrange further debt on the building—most recently securing a $165 million loan from Capital One.
The brokerage—which totals 10 people including Andy, President Scott and support staff—does not release aggregate origination numbers, but in the last decade Andrew, now 69, has completed more than $15 billion in debt deals in Manhattan alone. Scott, 44, has done several billion himself.
The Elghanayans’ renovated residential and retail property in Meatpacking, now under the family’s TF Cornerstone flag, is representative of the Singers’ generational approach to the business. Andy and Scott have seen the redevelopment through not only generations of their client but through the evolution of New York City’s neighborhoods. High-end boutiques, luxury condominiums and the Whitney Museum of American Art have since replaced the old warehouses and the stench of rotting meat (which both father and son say was the reason they would avoid Gansevoort Street on property tours with potential lenders).
“Singer & Bassuk understands family offices and multi-generational real estate companies because they are one themselves,” said Jason Muss, a principal at Muss Development, which was founded by his great-grandfather Isaac in 1906. “They understand the way we work and bring that perspective, which is really nice. They know us well, and they understand what we’re thinking.”
Muss’ first deal with Singer & Bassuk was for its Oceana Condominium & Club at 50 Oceana Drive East in Brooklyn’s Brighton Beach area. When the real estate market was just coming out of the recession, construction financing was finite, and the Muss family was looking to complete another phase of what would become a 15-tower, 865-unit development across 15 acres by the waterfront in Brooklyn. The Singers ended up snagging a $35 million mortgage for Muss from J.P. Morgan Chase to fund another segment of the $250 million development.
“They were creative in figuring out that the land had a certain amount of value,” Mr. Muss said. “We owned the land for a long time, and they helped us make the case that the loan should be a little better priced with a little bit higher loan-to-value, which was helpful to us.”
Scott, along with Jeffrey Moroch, who has been with Singer & Bassuk since 1999, took home third place in the Real Estate Board of New York’s 2012 most ingenious deal of the year for that transaction with Muss.
“They’re a big part of our advisory team,” Mr. Muss said. Since the company’s introduction to Singer & Bassuk just over eight years ago, Muss has used Andy and Scott to finance more than $100 million in loans, according to Mr. Muss.
Right now, Singer & Bassuk is working on allocating roughly $500 million in construction debt for Jerry Wolkoff-led G&M Realty’s apartment and retail development at the former graffiti artist haven 5 Pointz in Queens. Scott said Singer & Bassuk is also working on a $300 million refinancing of a trophy office building Downtown and a $300 million trophy asset in the Plaza District.
Late last year, Singer & Bassuk was engaged as the exclusive real estate finance adviser to the Brooklyn Navy Yard. “That’s really exciting for us and that comes out of a referral from a major institution who we both do business with,” Scott said.
Andy added that the team competed against a number of “big household names for the assignment.”
Recently, in February, Singer & Bassuk arranged a $245 million mortgage from Prudential Mortgage Capital Company on Ruben Companies’ 1700 Broadway in Midtown West. The Richard Ruben-led company built the 42-story office tower between West 53rd and West 54th Streets on a leasehold with the Shubert Foundation in 1968. Ruben Companies sought new financing because it had reached an agreement to purchase the fee interest in the land below and consolidate its ownership.
“That was a deal that was confidential and it was important to [Ruben Companies] that it remained so until it closed,” Scott said. “They came to us for advice and within an hour we had come up with a strategy for how to most efficiently do the financing, keep it confidential and get it closed quickly.”
In September 2015, Singer & Bassuk brokered a $100 million mortgage from AXA Equitable Life Insurance Company on TF Cornerstone’s headquarters at 387 Park Avenue South. Andy, along with Kathleen McSharry, senior managing director who has been with Singer & Bassuk and its predecessor firm since 1982, was in the running forREBNY’s Most Ingenious Deal of the Year award.
“At the time we went to get financing, the building was not stabilized,” explained Jeremy Shell, the head of finance and acquisitions at TFC. The company had renovated the building and was in the process of re-tenanting some vacant floors but “wanted to take advantage of the current interest rate environment and went out to get permanent financing,” he said.
“Andy creatively structured a master lease arrangement and secured the financing with AXA, and that was a very challenging structure to pull off,” Mr. Shell said. “Because of the creativity Andy brought to the table, and the relationships both we and Andy have with AXA, [we were able] to pull off a successful financing.”
Carnegie Hall Tower (Photo: TF Cornerstone).
Over the last six years, Andy alone arranged $832 million in both construction and permanent financing for TFC’s seven-building mega-development East Coast in Long Island City. Right now, Singer & Bassuk is about to bring another deal to market for TFC: Carnegie Hall Tower at 152 West 57th Street between Avenue of the Americas and Seventh Avenue. This will be Andy’s fifth time arranging debt on the building, including the original construction loan for the 60-story trophy office in 1988. Most recently, he completed a $190 million refinancing of the property with UBS and Helaba Bank.
Singer & Bassuk tends toward development deals, which is a point of pride, Scott said, because those types of transactions “take a deeper knowledge base to do and a deep relationship with your client, and you’re creating a very different relationship between a developer and the financing sources.”
Right now, however, there has been a bit of a slowdown in demand for construction financing. Land and labor costs are too high and need to come back down to earth, Andy said. And regulations like Basel-III are driving up bank prices when it comes to those deals.
But it wasn’t always big, glitzy deals. The elder Singer got his start in real estate almost unintentionally. He grew up in the western Bronx, at West 236th Street and Johnson Avenue, attended the then all-boys DeWitt Clinton High School and played bass in a rock band called Ricky & the Catalinas—they would play at churches, synagogues and dances.
He headed to University of Wisconsin—the first in his family to go to college—at the age of 16. During freshman orientation a classmate asked him what he was going to major in. His response was, “What’s a major?”
“I was totally unprepared to go to college,” Andy told Commercial Observer. He was handed a course catalog, rifled through the pages and came across a major called “real estate and urban economics.”
“I thought, ‘Hmm, I have these two uncles in Manhattan and they are in the real estate business,’ ” he said. “I didn’t know what they did at that point, but they lived really well. We would go to their house—there were linens on the table, there were people serving the meals. I thought this was unbelievable. I always had a desire to make a lot of money. I didn’t know how I would do it. And I said, ‘Gee, they go to Europe in the summer,’ and I hadn’t been north of Rockland County. I thought, ‘This sounds pretty good. You know what? I’ll major in real estate.’ And that’s how it started.”
Andy joined the army post-college and needed to find a job before he got out, as he was about to get engaged to his now-wife Harriet. He wrote to his uncles, asking for a job, so in 1968, the 21-year-old Andy was hired at his family’s firm Ackman Brothers with a weekly salary of $150.
He started in January and, on a cold winter’s day, made his way from the company’s West 42nd Street office to 525 West 21st Street. Growing up in the Bronx, Andy wasn’t too familiar with Manhattan. He got off the subway at 28th Street, looked at the address he needed to go to, and assumed he would need to walk about five blocks. He was wrong. He made his way west and then farther west, until he passed 10th Avenue and felt completely frozen. He entered the office of a company called John Jay Casale, met a man named Tom Joyce, said what his uncles had instructed him to say and asked if the company needed a mortgage. Tom said they did and led Andy around a warehouse, which housed the Railway Express Agency.
“I didn’t know what I was looking at, other than a bunch of boxes,” Andy said. “I went back to the office, told my uncles about it. They told me what to say next—and this was the first person I ever got to—and sure enough they hired us, and I arranged a loan of about $500,000 with a savings bank that’s long gone.”
In between his first deal and the next, Andy estimates he was either ignored or turned down by 100 people. “It was a very encouraging start,” he said, “and it was a little misleading as to how easy this business was.”
Easy or not, it was in Andy’s early days in real estate that he would get introductions to some of the folks who would become the city’s top real estate developers.
In 1976, Andy met Steven Rotter, the now-chief financial officer at Jack Resnick & Sons. Mr. Rotter was working as a junior accountant, and the first client he was sent out to do payroll taxes for was Ackman Brothers—the predecessor to Singer & Bassuk. Eventually, Mr. Rotter became a partner in the accounting firm and kept the brokerage as a client until he joined Jack Resnick & Sons in 1994.
“Since that time we have basically used Andy and Scott as our exclusive mortgage brokers and worked with them to refinance billions of dollars of loans,” he said. In fact, Singer & Bassuk is now refinancing many of the company’s buildings for the second or third time.
In the mid-1970s, Andy sold the St. George Hotel in Brooklyn Heights to a client of his named Martin Raynes, and he was then retained to arrange the financing. Mr. Raynes brought on two partners: Richard Bassuk, who would go on to be president at Andy’s firm and give it its current name, and Edward Minskoff—with whom Singer & Bassuk still works.
Scott on the other hand came in during a tougher time in real estate, a few years after the recession ended in 1991. He worked the summers in college at his father’s company, but despite advice from others to explore his options before hopping aboard the family firm, he did otherwise.
“I’m just listening to [Scott] go through this process, and one day he calls me up and says, ‘You know, dad, I’ve been thinking about this, and would it be okay if I started with you?’ ” Andy said. “So I controlled myself, and said, ‘Oh, if you really think that’s the right thing, then okay.’ I’m thinking like, ‘Yes!’ ”
As a father, Andy was careful not to put pressure on his children to join the family firm—his daughter Amy Kaissar, who is five years younger than Scott, works in theater and served as a minor-producer on Tony Award-winning Fun Home. (Andy didn’t get home until 3 a.m. the night of the Tony’s because he was out celebrating with his daughter.)
Scott on the other hand fell in love with his father’s work and said there were a number of things that drew him in.
“Maybe it took five minutes in between buildings at that point, but when we came into the city, I always thought it was cool that Andy would say I financed this building, I financed that building, I worked on that building,” he said. “I just got a big kick out of that. It was very tangible.”
Scott would tag along on meetings with his father, and one business breakfast in Florida stood out in particular. “[Dad] said we’re meeting a guy named Dave,” Scott recalled. “So we sit down at the table, and the guy named Dave was Dave Winfield, who is now a hall of fame baseball player. I sort of learned early on that there were some pretty interesting people who we could meet through doing this.”
But coming in post-recession was a great learning experience for Scott. It also helped him get ahead of his peers, he said. Many of his college classmates were going into investment banking, and it wasn’t until the late 1990s that he started to see people his age at the table, which he felt gave him a leg up because had a head start.
“I worked through this very, very difficult time and got grounded in the challenges that exist in the business, and I think that for me it turned out to be a great decision,” Scott said.
Working in close quarters, with the same clients, and of course spending time together outside of the office, is undoubtedly a lot. But Andy and Scott have made it work.
“One of the interesting things is how close they are and how well they work together. Oftentimes in father-and-son relationships there’s some tension,” Mr. Rotter of Resnick & Sons said. “I’ve never sensed that. They really work well together. Scott will defer to Andy, but Andy will also defer to Scott. It’s the relationship you’d like to have with your children.”
Both father and son explained that their relationship is based on mutual respect, and the elder Singer noted, “We’re very reasoned, rational. You’re talking with a colleague.”
Scott agreed, and explained that as he grew in the business, his differences with his father became more apparent—but that wasn’t a bad thing.
TF Cornerstone’s Queens waterfront buildings in Long Island City (Photo: TF Cornerstone).
“Dad was very open to giving me the space and respecting those differences and different approaches,” Scott said. “And that give-and-take has been critical to us just loving working together for all this time.”
Indeed, the two love what they do. When Andy wakes up in the morning, he looks out of the window of the East 69th Street apartment he shares with his wife and can see 70 Pine Street, where Singer & Bassuk arranged an aggregate of $500 million in financing for the development. He has watched World Wide’s 250 East 57th Street building go up floor by floor, another deal Singer & Bassuk arranged debt on.
“As soon as I open the shades, I’m back in business,” he said. “Every one of those buildings, 99.9 percent of them have mortgages. The vast majority of those mortgages come due every 10 years. Some less, some a little more. On average, 10 years. That’s inventory for our business.”
When asked whether they were ever tempted to try out a different part of the business, both Andy and Scott said no—though they did buy a stalled condo development at 264 Water Street in the Financial District and completed the property in 1993.
While other larger brokerages, like CBRE, Cushman & Wakefield, Eastern Consolidated and JLL, have many irons in the fire with capital markets teams and leasing and sales divisions, Singer & Bassuk has intentionally decided against that type of diversification.
“We’ve bucked that trend,” Scott said. “We think that we can excel by spending our time focusing on the finance side, so we’ve not brought in a sales team. We’re not trying to compete on the leasing side. We think that by focusing our time on one particular aspect, we can be the best at it. But we also avoid conflicts of interest by not being in those other businesses.”
That allows them to have great relationships with all sources of capital, from banks and insurance lenders to commercial mortgage-backed securities originators, all while being devoted to the borrower.
Again, those relationships with the borrowers are crucial to Singer & Bassuk’s success, and the two Singers work very closely not only with the principals of their clients’ firms but the chief financial officers and directors of finance as well. “We’re not competing with them at all. We’re being an extension of them—we’re being complementary,” Scott said.
Those relationships extend beyond office hours, which has been a tremendous trust-builder, Mr. Rotter said. He’s a Jets fan and brings his son to games with Andy and Andy’s granddaughters. The Singers have six front-row seats at the 50-yard line.
“I always know that they have our best interest at heart,” Mr. Rotter said. “I think they’d have that anyway, but it’s a trust-building thing.”
“We want [the clients] to think of us as their finance department,” Scott said. “The vast majority of them think of us that way and use us that way, and the rest we’re working on.”
A coding and software development school is taking a full floor at the Jack Resnick & Sons-owned 315 Hudson Street, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Galvanize, a Denver-based software educator, has signed a deal for 54,590 square feet at the 485,577-square-foot building between Spring and Vandam Streets, the paper reported. The length of the lease and asking rent were not immediately available.
CoStar Group indicates that space of this size is available on the second, fourth and ninth floors of the 10-story Hudson Square property. Asking rent for those spaces range from $55 to $75 per square foot. It wasn’t immediately clear if brokers were involved in the deal, and the landlord did not immediately comment via a spokeswoman.
The school is getting a 3,000-square-foot private entrance and coffee bar as part of the lease, according to the Journal. That space is currently one of the structure’s loading docks. Jack Resnick & Sons is currently pouring $65 million into upgrading the 120-year-old building that will feature a green roof and an expanded lobby.
Last year, online home goods retailer One Kings Lane signed a 51,576-square-foot deal at the building, as CO reported in July 2015. NYSARC, a nonprofit organization that helps the developmentally disabled, leased 247,107 square feet across several floors of the property, where it has been based since 1998, CoStar indicates.
The Ronald O. Perelman and Claudia Cohen Center for Reproductive Medicine of Weill Cornell Medicine has finalized a 15-year lease at 255 Greenwich Street in Tribeca, Commercial Observer has learned.
The fertility center will be in 10,547 square feet on part of the building’s fifth floor, according to a press release from landlord Jack Resnick & Sons. It should begin operating at the 600,000-square-foot property between Park Place and Murray Street in January 2017. Asking rent in the deal was in the $60s per square foot, according to a source familiar with the deal.
“We’re delighted to add Weill Cornell Medicine to our prestigious tenant roster at 255 Greenwich Street,” Jonathan Resnick, the president of Jack Resnick & Sons, said in prepared remarks. “We are confident that they will benefit from the building’s strategic location adjacent to Downtown’s major transportation hubs and the distinctive neighborhoods of [the Financial District], Tribeca and Battery Park City.”
This will be an extension of the center’s existing facility roughly half a mile away at 40 Worth Street between Church Street and West Broadway, per a spokeswoman for the landlord.
Dennis Brady and Brett Greenberg of Jack Resnick & Sons represented the landlord in-house, while John Cefaly and Michael Burgio of Cushman & Wakefield represented the tenant. The C&W brokers did not immediately return a request for comment via a spokesman.
The lease at 255 Greenwich Street with Weill Cornell Medicine puts the building at 98 percent occupancy, according to the landlord. In June 2015, the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai took 14,600 square feet at the structure, as CO previously reported. Target signed a 48,242-square-foot lease at the building to open the store’s first outpost in Lower Manhattan.
Janovic Paint & Decorating, a New York City paint supply chain, is remaining at its flagship store in Chelsea, Commercial Observer has learned.
The 128-year-old retailer inked a 12-year renewal for its store at 170 West 23rd Street between Avenue of the Americas and Seventh Avenue, according to landlord Jack Resnick & Sons, which owns the retail condominium at the base of the building. Janovic leases 7,590 square feet of it. That leaves 1,600 square feet of retail space available.
Janovic, which has 10 locations throughout the city, has been located in the Midtown South building since 1985. The renewal extends the paint retailer’s lease through 2030, according to a press release from the landlord.
Jack Resnick & Sons declined to provide the asking rent via a spokeswoman.
“Janovic has been a neighborhood mainstay for more than three decades, and we are delighted to extend our relationship for many years to come,” Dennis Brady of Jack Resnick & Sons said in prepared remarks. “Given its visibility, high foot traffic and the convenience of being in close proximity to the 23rd Street subway station, 170 West 23rd Street remains an ideal location.”
Brady and colleague Fran Delgorio represented the landlord in-house, while Janovic President and Chief Operating Officer Richard Gaudino represented the tenant in-house.
“For more than a century, Janovic has been a household name and a symbol of quality in New York City,” Gaudino said in a statement. “We’re proud to continue this great legacy and to be working with the Resnicks in recreating our longtime Chelsea home.”
Janovic, which has sold supplies to touch up the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Empire State Building and the King’s Theater in Brooklyn, has nine stores in Manhattan and a location in the Long Island City section of Queens, according to its website.
The new debt from the life company is being used to refinance $240 million loan provided by MorganStanely in 2007, and gives the borrower an additional $55 million in financing, mortgage documents show.
The Resnicks developed the 1.1-million-square-foot building in 1984 and it was designed by Swanke Hayden Connell Architects. The property sits between John and Fulton Streets in South Street Seaport.
The average floor plate is 36,000 square feet, and tenants include AON Service Group, Allied World Insurance and SCOR Insurance, according to the building’s website.
The Singer & Bassuk Organization brokered the financing on behalf of Jack Resnick & Sons.
A representative for Jack Resnick & Sons was not immediately available for comment, and a spokesman for AXA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Last year, the old guard of the Real Estate Board of New York opted to give Rob Speyer, the president and chief executive officer of Tishman Speyer, a fourth year as the group’s chairman—breaking the traditional three-year mold. Now, the 46-year-old real estate scion will continue leading REBNY for even more uncommon fifth year.
The real estate executive will now lead the lobbying organization through December 2017, according to a memo from REBNY President John Banks sent to the group’s board of governors and obtained by Commercial Observer.
“I am honored to have been asked to extend my term as Chairman through 2017,” Speyer said in a statement via a spokesman provided to CO. “I am also grateful for the opportunity to further my collaboration with John, his team and the entire Board of Governors as we collectively pursue an aggressive growth agenda for our city and the real estate industry.”
The REBNY chairmanship, held by an executive in the industry, typically lasts three calendar years and guides the organization’s policy, while the president handles day-to-day operations of the group.
“Rob’s continued leadership role at REBNY will be critical over the next 16 months as our industry addresses a series of issues on the local, state and federal levels,” Banks said in the emailed announcement. “Rob has been a tremendous asset to me since I joined REBNY in [July] 2015, and I am greatly appreciative of his ongoing support as well as his dedication to New York City and our industry.”
While a fifth year is uncommon, Speyer is not the longest-serving chairman of the organization. The late-Bernard Mendick helmed REBNY from 1992 until his death in 2001. Burton Resnick, the chairman and CEO of Jack Resnick & Sons, did two three-year terms from 1989 to 1991 and then from 2001 through 2003.
Why Speyer staying was not immediately clear, but the move comes as the expiration of the 421a tax abatement enters its eighth month. The issue has been on the front burner for REBNY, which was tasked with negotiating a prevailing construction wage with organized labor—an unsuccessful effort that led to the program’s demise this January.
REBNY also continues to play an active role on the rezoning of Midtown East, which is expected to allow for more density in the heavy business district, as well as create a stream of infrastructure investment for the city’s transportation system.
In a December 2015 interview with CO, Speyer said that affordable housing—a key component of the tax break—was a top issue for the city going into this year, which was expected to be his final as chairman.
“I’m hoping to unlock this riddle of an affordable housing program that can actually produce affordable housing,” Speyer said. “That would be a wonderful accomplishment—not just for REBNY, but for the city. If it doesn’t happen in 2016, it’s going to have to happen very soon.”
The Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York, the Ivy League school’s governing body, has signed a lease to expand its foothold at Jack Resnick & Sons’ 880 Third Avenue in Midtown.
Commercial Observer has learned that Columbia has inked a 12,081-square-foot deal for the entire third floor of the property between East 53rd and East 54th Streets.
The tenant has been based at the building since 2009, occupying the entire 11,477-square-foot second floor, for its ophthalmology department, according to a press release from the landlord. That will expand to the third floor, and Columbia will also use the space for its dermatology and otolaryngology/head and neck surgery departments.
Asking rent in the expansion was $60 per square foot, the release indicated. The landlord declined via a spokesman to provide the length of the lease and when the school would assume the space.
“We’re delighted that Columbia has chosen to grow with us and expand their medical offices at 880 Third Avenue,” Dennis Brady of Jack Resnick & Sons said in prepared remarks.
Brady and colleague Fran Delgorio represented the landlord, while Columbia was represented by its in-house real estate team.
Bevmax Office Centers, Jaffe Ross & Light and Kanan Corbin Schupak are some of the other office tenants at the building. TD Bank, Pret A Manger and Crumbs Bake Shop occupy the retail section.
Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein has signed a 10-year, 27,778-square-foot deal to remain at 250 Hudson Street three years before its lease expires, Commercial Observer has learned.
The law firm will continue to operate on the entire eighth floor of the 15-story building between Broome and Dominick Streets, which is owned by Jack Resnick & Sons, through 2029. Asking rents for the building range from between $75 per square foot to $90 per square foot.
“Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein was one of the original tenants that committed to 250 Hudson Street after we redeveloped the property over eight years ago, and we are delighted that they have chosen to remain here for another decade,” Jonathan Resnick, the president of Jack Resnick & Sons, said in prepared remarks.
CBRE’s David Kleinhandler, who represented Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein, did not return a request for comment via a spokeswoman.
The landlord, who was represented in-house by Dennis Brady and Brett Greenbergof Jack Resnick & Sons, put $40 million into a renovation of the 400,000-square-foot property from an industrial printing building into modern offices in 2008.
Jack Resnick & Sons has owned the property, which is LEED silver and WiredScore platinum-certified, since 1968. It has a 10,000-square-foot rooftop garden and lounge with views of the city’s skyline and Hudson River. Other tenants in the building include public relations company Daniel J. Edelman, advertising firm Interpublic Group of Companies, American Express and the Writers Guild of America East.
ZMC Advisors, originally known as Zelnick Media Capital, is relocating to 13,284 square feet at 110 East 59th Street, a source with knowledge of the deal told Commercial Observer, so it can expand and be closer to its investors and investments. The company will occupy the entire 24th floor of the 612,181-square-foot building between Lexington and Park Avenues, the source said.
In the second quarter of 2017, ZMC, which was founded by Strauss Zelnick in 2001, will move from a roughly 11,000-square-foot space at 19 West 44th Street between Fifth Avenue and Avenue of the Americas via an 11-year deal. The asking rent was $85 per square foot.
JLL’s Alexander Chudnoff and Dan Turkewitz represented the tenant in the deal and Dennis Brady and Fran Delgorio of Jack Resnick & Sons represented the landlord in-house. The tenant’s brokers did not immediately return a request for comment via a spokesman.
“We’re delighted to add ZMC to our prestigious tenant roster at 110 East 59th Street,” Brady said in a statement via a spokeswoman. “We are confident that they will benefit from the building’s strategic location near some of the finest hotels, shops and restaurants in Midtown.”
Cantor Fitzgerald, Estée Lauder, IMAX Corporation and RP Management are prominent tenants in the 37-story Class A building that Jack Resnick & Sons erected in 1969.
Home goods retail chain Bed Bath & Beyond has secured two office leases for new design and photo studios in Hudson Square, Jack Resnick & Sons announced.
The retail behemoth Bed Bath & Beyond has signed a deal for 27,778 square feet on the entire 11th floor of 250 Hudson Street for the photo studio, slated to open this summer, according to The New York Post, which first reported news of the deals. Bed Bath & Beyond has also sealed a deal to relocate home decor and subsidiary, One Kings Lane, to 51,576 square feet on the fourth floor of 315 Hudson Street. One Kings Lane is currently on the eighth floor.
Both deals are 10 years, and asking rents range from $75 to $90 per square foot, according to the Post.
Douglas Elliman Commercial’s Peter Gross and James Gross represented the tenant in both deals. They didn’t immediately respond to Commercial Observer’s request for comment. Jack Resnick & Sons’ Brett Greenberg and Dennis Brady worked on behalf of the the landlord in-house on 315 Hudson Street, along with Newmark Grubb Knight Frank’s David Falk, Jason Greenstein, Danny Levine and Peter Shimkin. Brady and Greenberg also represented Resnick at 250 Hudson Street.
“We are thrilled that the company has selected 250 and 315 Hudson to create a top-tier, urban studio and believe their decision will solidify our Hudson Square portfolio as a leading destination for a wide variety of creative, advertising, media and technology tenants,” Brady, an executive managing director at Jack Resnick & Sons, said in prepared remarks.
250 Hudson Street. Photo: CoStar Group
Steven H. Temares, the chief executive officer of Bed Bath & Beyond, said in a statement: “We are excited to share the plans to open our new Bed Bath & Beyond design and photo studio in Manhattan that will provide significant benefits and capabilities to help further reinforce our position as ‘the expert for the home. We believe bringing more of these capabilities in-house will allow us to enhance our ability to produce more inspirational content. In addition, we expect this effort, over time, to help improve our digital marketing assets and drive other operational efficiencies for the business.”
The company plans to bring a significant amount of the design and photography work for the company’s brands, which include Bed Bath & Beyond, buybuy BABY, Christmas Tree Shops, andThat! and Harmon Face Values in-house.
At 315 Hudson Street, which is between Spring and Vandam Streets, Jack Resnick & Sons is undergoing a $65 million renovation project, with the lobby slated for completion this summer and the second phase (landscaped green roof, new mechanical systems, modernized elevators with a destination dispatch system and new windows) ready in 2019. It is a building the company has owned for over 55 years. Other tenants in the building include Galvanize, IntentMedia and Moda Operandi.
Jack Resnick & Sons has owned 250 Hudson Street between Broome and Dominick Streets since 1968. This building underwent a $40 million renovation, completed in 2008, according to CoStar Group. Tenants in the building include Edelman and Gluckman Tang Architects. CO reported last September, Lieff Cabraser Heimann & Bernstein signed a 10-year, 27,778-square-foot deal to remain at 250 Hudson Street three years before its lease expired.
The City of New York has signed a 10,130-square-foot lease to expand its offices at Jack Resnick & Sons’ 255 Greenwich Street, Commercial Observer has learned. This expands it footprint in the building to 217,942 square feet.
The city will take the additional space on a portion of the fifth floor of the building between Murray Street and Park Place. It will provide extra room for the Office of Management and Budget,which already has space in the building, according to the landlord. The asking rent in the 10-year deal was $60 per square foot.
The government currently has 207,812 square feet of offices on the entire sixth through ninth floors of the building. It expects to occupy the additional space this summer.
“We are thrilled to continue and expand upon our partnership with the City of New York, which has been our tenant at 255 Greenwich Street since 1990,” Jack Resnick & Sons’ Dennis Brady, who represented the landlord in-house with colleague Brett Greenberg, said in a prepared statement.
Capital One has provided a $40 million loan to Jack Resnick & Sons for 161 William Street, according to property records.
The debt replaces and modifies a $35 million mortgage from Bear Stearns that was made in 2007 and securitized in the Morgan Stanley-sponsored MSC2007-T27 commercial mortgage-backed securities transaction. The ten-year loan was set to expire this May.
The property is a 22-story, 192,935-square-foot office building located on the corner of William and Ann Streets in the Financial District. It is 100 percent leased, according to Jack Resnick & Sons’ website. The building was built in 1951 and underwent a modernization in 2009, with renovations including a new marble lobby, a cooling tower, and upgraded elevator control systems.
Pace University is the property’s anchor tenant and leases 168,028 square feet, or 87 percent of leasable space. Its lease expires in October 2021, according to data from Trepp.
“We were happy to work with Jack Resnick & Sons to come up with a financing solution that met their needs for 161 William Street, where Pace University has been a long-term tenant,” said Jon Smith, a vice president in Capital One’s Commercial Real Estate Group.
Representatives for Jack Resnick & Sons and SBO did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
