High noon for MSG
Expect fireworks at hearing
THE showdown over how long to extend Madison Square Garden’s “special permit” to stay at its home of over a half-century is scheduled at the OK Corral — a k a the City Council’s Subcommittee on Zoning and Franchises — Monday.
Spectators at the 1 p.m. session on the 14th floor of 250 Broadway might want to duck.
The Dolan family, which owns the Garden, wants the license to be immortal. The City Planning Commission recommends a 10year extension that would require the Dolans to upgrade surrounding streets and sidewalks and work with transit agencies to make improvements to Penn Station.
But “Move the Garden” advocates insist the council limit a permit renewal to three years. Many state elected officials, Community Board Five members, architects, and urban-planning and civic organizations insist that the only way to create a truly better station is by taking MSG off the top of it.
The committee vote will need to be seconded by the full City Council later.
But whatever today’s outcome, expect howling from whichever faction doesn’t get what it wants.
Fulton Mall market
Brooklyn’s eight-block-long Fulton Street Mall has seen major national brands such as Nordstrom Rack, American Eagle Outfitters, Gap, Pandora and Aldo claim storefronts previously dominated by cheap fast-food and junk stores.
Macy’s thrives in reduced size. The reborn Gage & Tollner restaurant revived a taste of Fulton’s long-ago dining glamour.
Also reflecting the strip’s rising fortunes, New Jersey’s low-key Inserra family, owners of dozens of supermarkets in the state, has signed a lease for a 21,000-squarefoot emporium called The Fresh Grocer at RMC Assets’ 523 Fulton St. RMC owner Raymond M. Chera spent $20 million to renovate and modernize the centuryold, three-story building.
The store will have a Fulton Street entrance with the bulk of the space downstairs. Cushman & Wakefield’s Ian Lerner represented the landlord, while Lee & Associates’ Steve Lorenzo repped the Inserras.
Lerner said Fresh Grocer, which spearheads an expansion by the Inserras, will have “a prominent presence on one of Brooklyn’s highest-profile streets. RMC Assets is committed to enhancing the neighborhood by attracting premier national credit tenants to the Fulton Mall area.”
The building occupies the whole blockfront between Duffield Street and Albee Square West.
Brooklyn Hospital earlier leased more than 51,000 square feet of office space in the 114,000-squarefoot building and Spectrum Cable took 3,900 square feet of groundfloor retail space.
Office occupancy
New York City landlords aren’t the only ones who are fed up with Kastle Systems’ oft-cited Back-toWork Barometer, which claims to tally physical office occupancy.
Paul R. Levy, president/CEO of Philadelphia’s Center City business-improvement district, raged over a recent Wall Street Journal story that called downtown Philly “one of the emptiest office districts in America.”
The story cited Kastle’s finding that Philadelphia office occupancy was only 40% of pre-pandemic levels. (The most recent numbers for the week ending Aug. 16 was a depressing 38.9%.)
Among other gripes, Levy claimed that Kastle counts card swipes at only two buildings in Philly’s 42–million–square-foot office market.
Of the city’s “primary” office towers, “none use Kastle Systems,” Levy said.
As in New York, Kastle declined to say exactly what properties it monitors.
But Levy echoed what we’ve reported more than once about Kastle’s New York “metro” data, which includes buildings far from the Big Apple but only one owned by the city’s 10 largest commercial landlords. A survey by Realty Check found that Vornado, SL Green, Boston Properties, Brookfield, Tishman Speyer and Related, among other giants, aren’t part of the Kastle data.
In other words, Kastle omits the buildings that have the most employees at their desks due to their higher quality and concentration of financial and law-firm tenants.