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Is the Chrysler Building’s reputation enough for it to endure as an icon, or is it at risk of fading away from the skyline, as newer, taller and glitzier glass buildings surround it? — The New York Times
William Van Alen’s iconic masterpiece of the Art Deco style (which topped out just six days before the stock market crash of 1929) is now facing financial uncertainties after its pre-pandemic sale for just $150 million to an Austrian developer and New York-based CRE firm. The recent bankruptcy... View full entry
Many modern companies “have as many conference rooms as there are executives,” [Kay] Sargent said, and it’s become a “dirty little secret” that conference rooms are the new corner offices. [...] When a high-ranking executive parks themselves in a big conference room or spreads their stuff across the long table in the office coffee shop, no one is going to tell them to leave. — The Atlantic
The influence that Google exerted over office design in the 2000s has been credited with starting the movement toward a post-COVID reality in which the private spaces within offices now occupy only 45% of the total footprint. (H/t CoStar.com from January) Still, The Atlantic’s Michael Waters... View full entry
The Chinese owners of the stalled residential, hotel and retail complex towering over Crypto.com Arena have hired real estate brokers to sell the property to buyers who could restart the project after work stopped in 2019. Taggers recently covered its outer walls with graffiti visible from far away. — LA Times
The LA Times also reports the brokerage firm Colliers to have submitted an application estimating the property’s current value at $485 million and stating it is still just 60% completed. Another $865 million would be required to finish the block-scale development designed by CallisonRTKL. Some... View full entry
Details of the planned Wynn New York City resort scheme from Related Companies and the Oxford Properties Group have been released, along with new renderings and further details about the final Phase 2 building segment at Hudson Yards. The three-tower scheme chosen from the set of alternative... View full entry
The next chapter in New York’s Hudson Yards has been revealed, with developers filing a bid for a potential mixed-use casino complex. Related Companies and Wynn Resorts submitted plans as part of an environmental impact process last week with the New York City Department of City Planning... View full entry
Five years after driving WeWork into the ground, co-founder and ousted CEO Adam Neumann has now hatched a plan to buy it out of bankruptcy. In a letter to WeWork’s advisers obtained by The New York Times, Neumann and his new real estate business, Flow Global, express interest in buying the co-working space solution — but claim WeWork has been ignoring attempts to get more information so they can come up with a bid. — The Verge
WeWork, meanwhile, is beginning to walk away from even more properties under the direction of new CEO David Tolley after announcing an initial list of 40 that would be relinquished in November. Neumann had cited outside scrutiny as his main reason for leaving the company in September... View full entry
Just three large office towers — of more than 500,000 square feet — are being built across New York City, with two expected to open in 2024 or 2025 and nothing else projected to go up for years. Normally, a handful of sites that size would be in various stages of construction, with at least one opening every year since 2018, according to JLL, a real estate services firm. — The New York Times
Due to an obvious confluence of interest rates, office vacancy records, and construction costs, the Times says Manhattan is “entering its most significant office construction drought since after the savings and loan crisis in the late 1980s and early ’90s.” Recent superlatives like BIG’s... View full entry
After officially filing for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection last week, WeWork has released a subsequent list of 40 “underperforming locations” across New York City that the company hopes to walk away from over the coming months pending court approvals. The news was first made public via the... View full entry
Google has scrapped a $15 billion development deal that would have benefitted California’s Silicon Valley with new modern office parks, affordable housing, and mixed-use districts, according to reports published by CNN and Reuters late Friday. The deals struck with Australian multinational... View full entry
U.S. colleges are taking advantage of a post-pandemic increase in affordable, unused offices by purchasing such properties for educational use, according to reporting by The New York Times. Since 2018, numerous higher education institutions in the U.S. have been acquiring office buildings, with... View full entry
Amid challenging conditions in the real estate and lending markets, a proposed 80-story residential tower that had been planned to be the tallest high-rise in Texas has now been scaled back to 45 stories. [...]
Taylor Wilson, president of Wilson Capital, said the revised design comes in response both to feedback from Austin's Design Commission and to significant changes in the real estate and financial markets, which are grappling with rising interest rates and tightened lending standards.
— The Austin American-Statesman
The revised Wilson Tower proposal would have surpassed I.M. Pei’s JPMorgan Chase Tower in Houston as the state’s record-holder. KPF’s Waterline development is still on track to break it by 20 feet. The episode highlights the economic stasis affecting developers in the city’s insanely... View full entry
As part of Google’s downsizing that went into effect early this year, the company has gutted its development team for the San Jose campus.
The construction project, which was supposed to break ground before the end of 2023, has been put on pause, and no plan to restart construction has been communicated to contractors, according to people familiar with the matter who asked not to be named due to non-disclosure agreements.
— CNBC
The news broke on Friday amid a sector-wide fallout caused in part by the tech recession. CNBC reported that some sources now speculate as to whether or not the 80-acre development will be completed at the same scale though both LendLease and Google have reaffirmed their commitment to it in... View full entry
A new report from Moody’s Analytics is further dampening CRE prospects for the near future after declaring all office structures built before 1980 to be “obsolete” in terms of their abilities to lure back tenants in the face of an ongoing national downtown decline. Speaking... View full entry
Ownership of Manhattan’s iconic Flatiron Building is still up in the air after the surprise winning bidder at last week’s auction failed to follow through on a $19 million deposit that would have guaranteed his sole ownership of the building, which has been vacant for years. Last week, the... View full entry
But joining the fraternity of cities with supertalls can also be a dubious distinction: Real estate is a lagging indicator, and skyscrapers often arrive after the boom is over, looming half-empty as monuments to a bust. Others, however, are convinced that Austin’s high-rise stampede is just getting started.
Given the city’s emerging significance as a next-gen manufacturing hub this building boom could defy the skyscraper effect.
— Bloomberg
With a slate of high-rises and supertalls, including KPF’s Waterline design and the record-setting Wilson Tower from HKS in the works, Bloomberg asks if the pace of development can be sustained amidst tech’s downturn and the annals of urban economic history. The salvation apparently lies... View full entry
