From left: Gateway Plaza and Maureen Koetz

Tenants slapped the LeFrak Organization and other parties associated with Gateway Plaza with a $100 million class action lawsuit for allegedly neglecting promised heating repairs.

Filed in Manhattan Supreme Court by some 5,000 residents of the six-building rental complex, the suit also names landlord Battery Park City Authority, Gateway Plaza Management Corporation and the Marina Tower Associates as defendants.

The plaintiffs claim the mixed-rate apartments at 389 South End Avenue were built poorly and allow cold air inside, forcing tenants to scrape ice off their windows to prevent water damage, and to spend big bucks on electric heating units to stay warm, the New York Daily News reported. New York State Assembly candidate Maureen Koetz, who was once a lawyer for the Environmental Protection Agency and a U.S. senator, is leading the charge, according to the paper.

LeFrak promised to make insulation repairs by the end of last year but didn’t follow through, as previously reported. [NYDN] — Angela Hunt

210 West 55th Street

A male construction worker, likely in his 40s, died today after falling from a four-story scaffold at the Dream Hotel, at 210 West 55th Street, a New York Police Department spokesperson confirmed.

An investigation into the incident is ongoing. The identity of the worker is not being released at this time. He fell on top of a sidewalk shed and was pronounced dead at the scene.

A spokesperson for Hampshire Hotels, the owner of the building, was not immediately available for comment.

Hampshire appears to have been  performing repair work to the building’s terracotta facade and general remediation in connection with Local Law 11 compliance, according to Department of Buildings permits.

Renderings of One Soho Square

Stellar Management and Rockpoint Group have unveiled a first glimpse at One Soho Square, a planned office project that will roll 161 Avenue of the Americas and 233 Spring Street into one.

The images, created by Neoscape, reveal a newly-added glass lobby and insides that will be completely revamped, as a representative told New York YIMBY. A rooftop edition will also add commercial penthouses sprouting from atop prewar structures in a contemporary design in the vein of Quinlan Development Group and Tavros Development Partners’ neighboring One Vandam. In total, One Soho Square will measure 768,000 square feet and stretch 19 stories high.

Rendering planned glass lobby at One Soho Square

Gensler is the architect on the project, and Cushman & Wakefield are exclusively handling marketing and leasing, The planned renovation and expansion is slated for a 2016 completion date. Trendy eyewear retailer Warby Parker is the first office tenant to sign up for Stellar Management’s One Soho Square, inking a deal in July 2013 for 54,000 square feet on the sixth and seventh floors, with an option to expand to 75,000 square feet. [New York YIMBY] — Julie Strickland

Seth Brown

From the April issue: Title insurance may not be the sexiest corner of New York City real estate, but homeowners, developers, attorneys and lenders can’t do business without it.

Yale classmates Daniel Price and Seth Brown were inspired to start their insurance underwriting firm after years of experience in finance and real estate development. They opened their doors in February at 222 Broadway in the Financial District. [more]

From left: 158 Lafayette Street (Photo: PropertyShark), Eli Tabak, Scott Klatsky (top) and Hy Schermer

A joint venture of the Bluestone Group and Princeton Holdings closed today on the $18.35 million purchase of an L-shaped office and retail building in Soho adjacent to the Mondrian Soho hotel, The Real Deal has learned.

Bluestone, headed by co-founders Marc Mendelsohn and Eli Tabak, and Princeton, headed by Tabak’s brother Joseph, purchased the 19,500-square-foot building with 106 feet of frontage on Lafayette Street and 23 feet on Grand Street. The seller was an entity with an address at the development and brokerage firm Time Equities.

The sale comes as office and retail rents have surged in the area, local owners said. David Zar, a partner with the landlord Zar Property NY, which owns several Soho properties including 42 Greene Street, said office asking rents on that street are up to $79 per square foot up from the mid-$30s three or four years ago.

“[There is] strong interest from tech, apparel, media [as well as] tenants that aren’t price conscious and appreciate the cast iron buildings and cobblestone streets,” said Zar, who was not a party to this transaction.

The building is diagonal from the first New York City location for the rapidly-growing temporary office space firm, WeWork, at 154 Grand Street.

The property was marketed by Scott Klatsky and Hy Schermer of Time Equities. An undisclosed real estate investor signed a contract to buy the property, then flipped that contract to Bluestone and Princeton, according to a person familiar with the deal.

The new owners plan to hire office and leasing brokers and reposition the current tenancy, sources familiar with the deal said. Eli Tabak, speaking for the joint venture, declined to comment.

The retail portion is currently divided into four spaces. Two of them — representing 60 percent of the space  — are occupied, while the office space is partially occupied, insiders said. Retail asking rents for the area are about $250 per foot.

From left: Walnut Hill’s Stephen Yang, 31 West 27th Street and Woody Heller

Private equity firm Westbrook Partners just closed on the acquisition of a Midtown South office building at 31 West 27th Street for north of $80 million, The Real Deal has learned.

The 12-story, 126,024-square-foot building is located at between Broadway and Sixth Avenue. The seller, San Francisco-based Walnut Hill Group, bought the building for $65 million in 2012 from Sharif El-Gamal, as TRD reported.

El-Gamal, the CEO of Soho Properties who grabbed headlines for his attempt to build an Islamic cultural center known as Park51 in Lower Manhattan, acquired the West 27th Street building in 2009 for $45.7 million.

The Westbrook deal was first reported by Real Estate Alert.

Studley’s Woody Heller, Will Silverman and Eric Negrin represented Walnut Hill in the transaction. Silverman declined to comment. A representative for Westbrook did not comment by press time.

The Stella Adler Studio of Acting has about 30,000 square feet at the building, according to CoStar data. Other tenants include architecture firm Stonehill & Taylor Architects, as well as advertising firm Federated Media.

Walnut Hill, founded in 2010 by Albert Hwang, Jimmy Park and Stephen Yang, owns an interest in the Holiday Inn Express hotel at 13-15 West 45th Street.

In December, Westbrook sold two retail assets at the base of the Astor and Metro buildings for $130 million to Midtown-based investment fund Madison Capital.

From left: Sandy Weill and 15 Central Park West

Former Citigroup chairman and CEO Sandy Weill, who unloaded his 15 Central Park West penthouse for $88 million back in December 2011, has also sold a comparatively modest set of maid’s quarters in the building for $3 million.

Weill reportedly lived in the 1,079-square-foot pad while his pricey penthouse was being renovated and after it sold. The one-bedroom, one-and-a-half bath apartment also boasts a private terrace, and was initially listed for $6.25 million in January.

Though the final deal netted Weill less than 50 percent of the initial ask, he will still pocket a $2 million profit, having paid only $1 million for the property in 2007. He also netted a $44 million profit on the penthouse, and awaits his next real estate pay day with a $14 million estate in Greenwich, Conn., which is currently on the market. [Curbed] — Julie Strickland

Frank Skillern (inset) and 127 East 62nd Street

Former American Express Centurion Bank CEO Frank Skillern is planning to bring his Upper East Side townhouse, known in upper crust New York social circles for its in-house cabaret theater, to market for $10.45 million, The Real Deal has learned.

The five-story property, at 127 East 62nd Street, between Park and Lexington avenues, is listed by Jed Garfield of boutique brokerage Leslie J. Garfield & Associates.

127 East 62nd Street

Broadway stars such as Michael Feinstein have performed to guests of Skillern and his wife Mary, big musical theater fans, in the property’s theater space. And Skillern delights in giving tours of his extensive collection of videos and DVDs of musicals housed in his personal library and screening room, according to previous reports.

The 4,280-square-foot home has four bedrooms, 5.5 bathrooms and a north-facing terrace and sun room on the fifth floor.

127 East 62nd Street

Skillern, who served as CEO of Amex from 1996 to 1999, has owned the property since 1998, public records show. It wasn’t clear what he and his wife paid for it.

Garfield said the couple is looking to switch to apartment-living in their retirement.

“They’re young at heart but they’re of an age where they want to be on a single floor,” he said, “but they’re planning on staying in the neighborhood.”

127 East 62nd Street

From left: Herman McCall and Don Peebles

Don Peebles, a Miami-based developer in the running to rebuild Long Island College Hospital, reportedly has ties to the head of the group running the facility.

The relationship began while Herman McCall, chairman of the board of directors for the State University of New York, was running for governor in 2002, according to Crain’s. That year, Peebles attended a fundraising dinner and donated $1,000 to McCall’s campaign, according to records analyzed by the news site.

When McCall became state comptroller, he was equally friendly: although his financial record doesn’t show any direct links to Peebles, he did “invest in Peebles’ projects,” as The Real Deal previously reported. McCall was criticized during his tenure for taking donations from companies that received pension-fund investments, Crain’s reported.

A spokesperson for McCall told Crain’s that the SUNY board head will not play any direct role in choosing a bidder. McCall is an ex officio member of all SUNY committees according to the board’s bylaws, but it was not immediately clear whether that role gives McCall a vote on the independent committee tasked with approving a developer for the site. [Crain's] – Angela Hunt 

Rendering of structure built from landfill via design group Terraform1

1. Prospect Lefferts Gardens locals host town hall on Hudson Companies high-rise [Brownstoner]
2. Sustainable architecture group designs NYC towers built from trash [Curbed]
3. May 1 used to be “Moving Day” for all of Manhattan [ApartmentTherapy]
4. Where all those psuedo-New Yorkers really come from [Curbed]
5. One of New York City’s worst listings gets a makeover [Lonny]
6. City sanitation worker tickets East Sider for kicking trash into ground-floor unit [ABC News]
7. Eastern Dispensary hits market for $30M after failed Landmarks bid [Curbed] — Angela Hunt

David Lichtenstein and 112-118 Fulton Street

The Lightstone Group is one step closer to erecting its lean 59-story mixed-use tower in the Financial District.

Demolition of the low-rise apartment buildings at 112-118 Fulton Street is reportedly imminent now that construction fencing and signs are up. Lightstone originally sought to tear down 120 Fulton Street too, but the state denied the developer’s initial bid. That proposal included a 421a tax abatement.

The new building, located between Nassau and Dutch streets, would include 460 units, 20 percent of which will be affordable. The developer picked up the site for $63 million in January 2013.

Construction is slated for completion by 2017, BuzzBuzzHome reported. The firm is also moving forward with a massive mixed-use project on the Gowanus Canal after kicking off the first phase of construction earlier this month. [BuzzBuzzHome] — Angela Hunt

From left: Jeff Appel and Shlomi Reuveni

A month after Town Residential owners Joseph Sitt and Andrew Heiberger settled a legal battle for control of the firm, the company has scored a major coup with a high-profile hire.

Brown Harris Stevens senior managing director Shlomi Reuveni, who headed up BHS’ new development marketing arm Brown Harris Stevens Select, has joined Town as a managing director of new development, The Real Deal has learned.

“We are thrilled to have Shlomi Reuveni join us in this key leadership role based on his stellar track record, client-centric approach, outstanding reputation and accomplished career,” said Jeff Appel, President and COO of Town, in a statement provided to The Real Deal.

Reuveni’s hiring may signal a changing of the tides at Town as it comes after a wave of recent defections from the company following the legal dispute. Recent departures include those of Robert Dvorin, Clayton Orrigo and Patty LaRocco, all of whom went to competing brokerage Douglas Elliman, and James Cox, who moved to Stribling & Associates.

Town’s spokesperson told TRD that Reuveni’s hiring would be the first in a number of personnel announcements at the firm in the coming weeks.

“The new development division is poised to emerge as a cornerstone of Town’s impressive offerings,” Reuveni said in a statement.

During his time at BHS, Reuveni represented high-profile developments like the Laureate on the Upper West Side, Merritt House on the Upper East, and 15 Union Square West and Reade57 in Union Square and Tribeca, respectively.

“Shlomi Reuveni has been a successful broker for many years and we wish him well in his future endeavors,” said Hall Willkie, president of Brown Harris Stevens.

The third season of Bravo’s “Million Dollar Listing New York” premieres tonight at 9, but that doesn’t mean that the show’s broker stars couldn’t start celebrating early.

The festivities began on Monday night with a soirée at the Andaz Wall Street rooftop sponsored by Bravo, New York Magazine and Uber. All three brokers — Luis D. Ortiz of Douglas Elliman, Fredrik Eklund of Elliman and Ryan Serhant of Nest Seekers International — spent the evening posing for Instagram shots with fans, presenting the crowd with a teaser video of the season and munching on an array of hors d’oeuvres.

Last night, Ryan Serhant hosted his own premiere party at Lavo, a nightclub in Midtown. A total of 1,100 guests filed into the space after waiting on a two-block line, Serhant said. The event featured dancers on platforms, dance music spun in part by a 10-year-old DJ named DJ Aiden Jude, a crowd featuring Josh Altman of the Los Angeles version of “Million Dollar Listing” and journalist Michael Musto. Serhant’s co-stars were not in attendance.

“Things are bigger and better than ever,” Serhant told The Real Deal of the third season before the Monday night event. As for what viewers can expect beginning tonight, he added: “Balls-to-the-wall craziness.”

Eklund, whose wedding to artist Derek Kaplan aired in the second season, said that being married has impacted him positively — something that viewers will see in the show this season.

“I’m more balanced,” he said. “I’m happier.”

As for Ortiz, who on Monday night was battling a cold, he said the show’s fans will get to see each broker’s own motivations for staying in the business.

“Money was never my passion,” he said. What is? “A better version of myself.

At $45,000 a night, the Ty Warner Penthouse in the Four Seasons Hotel in New York City is the most expensive hotel room in North America.

So, what do you get for this (non-negotiable) price? For starters, you’re 700 feet above Manhattan and have a one-of-a-kind 360-degree view of the city. You also get a personal butler who will tend to your every need, a chauffeur who will drive you anywhere in a Rolls Royce, and a $65,000 bed with 22-karat gold woven throughout the bedspread.

Take our tour of the Ty Warner Penthouse to see why it’s one of the most expensive hotel rooms in the world.

(Produced by Will Wei. Additional Camera by Justin Gmoser)

Jaron Benjamin from the Met Council on Housing

Only five apartment buildings built in Brooklyn between 2008 and 2012 included below-market-rate units, according to a new report from an affordable housing advocacy group.

In those five years, 61 buildings built in the borough will receive a total of $158 million in tax breaks, according to the report, released today by the Real Affordability for All Campaign. Only six percent of the nearly 4,440 units built were affordable for low- and moderate-income households.

“We know that the city is going to use subsidies to entice developers to build more, but if we’re going to do that, we need to produce maximum affordability in our units,” Jaron Benjamin, executive director of the Met Council on Housing, told the New York Daily News.

The study recommended that new residential developments should be 50 percent affordable and 50 percent market rate. But Steven Spinola, president of the Real Estate Board of New York, told the Daily News that the target was unfeasible.

“We all agree New York needs more affordable housing,” Spinola said, “but changes to policy should not be based on flawed studies like this.” [NYDN] -–Hiten Samtani

From left: Sean Black, 229 West 43rd Street (Credit: CoStar Group) and Sacha Zarba

When LinkedIn first set up shop in New York City in 2009, it started with a small sublease in the Empire State Building. As the social networking company grew, it kept devouring space in the tower. LinkedIn now ranks among the biggest tenants in the New York landmark, with 160,000 square feet.

“The way the building’s lease expirations rolled allowed for a very creative strategy expansion,” said CBRE’s Sacha Zarba, who represents LinkedIn in New York. “It’s very hard to find a building that can potentially work for your client five years down the line, but if you want to be a long-term advisor to these clients, you have to think that way.”

Welcome to the world of tech brokers, a group of dealmakers who are grabbing the headlines in the New York City leasing market and are responsible for some of the market’s biggest transactions. Their rise to prominence mirrors the growth in the city’s tech industry, which added 3,000 jobs in January, a year-over-year increase of 5.1 percent that was second only to the retail industry, according to a recent JLL report.

Tech tenants have already signed six leases in excess of 50,000 square feet this year, including IBM’s Watson, which took 120,000 square feet at 51 Astor Place, and Twitter, which inked a deal to take more than 140,000 square feet at 245-249 West 17th Street.

Not surprisingly, brokers for these fast-growing companies boast a particular set of skills that tend to dovetail with their clients’ needs. For starters, the brokers have a keen sense of how the explosive growth in the tech industry plays into demands for space. They also can spot winners out of the hundreds of tech startups that pop up, and have the ability to convince landlords that companies they’ve never heard of are worth courting. Often, they are required to don a consultant’s cloak to advise tech companies, many of which are run by 20-somethings, on how their real estate could play into their overall growth strategy. And they have no problem relying on new-fangled tools to communicate with their clients.

“The good brokers talk to them [tenants] about how the space will impact their balance sheet, and also prep them on how to talk about it to their investors,” said Ryan Masiello, a former JLL broker who is now a top executive at cloud-based leasing portfolio management startup View the Space. “It’s much more of a consultative approach than with other industries.”

It’s essential for tech brokers to have a keen grasp of the movers and shakers in the tech world. “If you’re not reading Wired, Fast Company and Business Insider,” said JLL’s Sean Black, who has represented Foursquare, Business Insider and WeWork, “you’re probably behind the 8 ball.”

CBRE’s Zarba, who has also represented Mashable and Groupon, said that monitoring fundraising in the tech sector is another good way to see when IT companies are ready for a real estate upgrade. “The round of funding and the amount of funding they’re looking for often translates directly to where they are in the search for space,” Zarba said. IT companies tend to get serious about the real estate hunt after securing their second round of financing, known as the Series B round, he added.

Technology companies are also unique in how far they stretch their available space. “In corporate America, if you go below 225 square feet per person, you’d have mutiny within the ranks,” Black said. In the tech world, however, employees are fine with even as little as 150 square feet per person, he said, but “when they grow, they grow 300 percent.”

Case in point: During a recent visit to View the Space’s 2,000-square-foot office at 360 Seventh Avenue, barely an arm’s length separated one coder from another. But the company, which raised about $7.2 million since it launched in 2011, is soon moving its 27 employees to 7,400-square-foot digs at 142 West 36th Street.

To connect with tech tenants, Masiello said it was important to adopt some of the new-fangled tools they use to communicate. Brokers now use file-sharing service Dropbox, for example, to share financial analyses of lease deals with potential clients. “These people are used to working on the cloud at high speed, and then you look at commercial real estate, which is a slack, static process,” Masiello said.

Texting is another preferred way to stay in touch with clients, who are often too busy doing multiple things to communicate over the phone. “It’s not uncommon that you’re communicating solely by text,” Black said.

One of the most prominent characteristics of workers at tech and creative companies, Black said, is their aversion to the squeaky-clean environments preferred by law and financial firms — tenants that have traditionally been the mainstay of Manhattan office leasing.

“You show them [tech tenants] raw space, with exposed brick and concrete, someone throws some chairs in, and you’ve got an office,” he said.

Landlords recognize this preference and have made changes to their buildings to court such tenants. Brookfield Office Properties, for one, even changed the name of its massive Lower Manhattan complex to Brookfield Place, from World Financial Center. “The intent was to get rid of the connotation of the suit-and-tie types,” Black said.

Fledgling technology companies are partial to plug-and-play space, as the mercurial nature of their industry makes it tricky to predict future needs. “A law firm that’s been around for 50 years, they understand their trajectory and head count and growth,” said CBRE’s Ross Zimbalist, who has represented the Winklevoss twins. “But tech companies may be hesitant to invest in space they may outgrow in 24 months.”

Landlords are also more sensitive to tech tenants’ need for flexibility, Zarba said, and are now amenable to doing short-term space deals.

Blackstone Group’s Equity Office, which owns 229 West 43rd Street in Times Square, spent $105 million renovating the 789,826-square-foot building, adding ping-pong tables, a basketball court and renovating 25,000 square feet of outdoor space in an effort to attract tech and media tenants to the Times Square location. Since then, the Newmark Grubb Knight Frank team that handles leasing at the building has signed marquee tenant Yahoo to the top four floors of the building, among other tech and media tenants.

Blackstone managed to position the building as a tech-friendly oasis, Masiello said, despite the fact that the building was, at the time, “30 blocks away from any other tech companies.”

Hunter’s Point South towers wrapped in orange netting

A contractor squabble over the delivery of $13 million worth of windows for Long Island City development Hunter’s Point South may delay the completion of construction’s first phase.

A handful of the panes in question, originally set to be delivered in September 2013, arrived last week, a spokesperson for the development partnership of the Related Companies, Phipps Houses Group and Monadnock Construction told the Wall Street Journal reported. Construction on one of the towers finished in October, minus the window panes, and another in January. The buildings have since sat wrapped in orange netting, a pause causing Queens residents and neighboring office workers to scratch their heads.

“We’re just sitting and waiting for windows, which is bizarre,” James Van Bramer, City Council Majority Leader, told the Journal. “It’s disappointing on so many levels.”

An attorney for the Florida-based window maker Glasswall LLC told the Journal that the $7 million to $8 million worth of windows have been ready for months but that the developers tried to renegotiate the contract, refusing to pay for them in the meantime.

“We’ve already produced two-thirds of the material,” Jason Giller, an attorney for Glasswall, told the Journal. “We haven’t been paid anything.”

A spokeswoman for the development trio denied that it attempted to renegotiate the agreed-upon contract to the Journal.

An end to the standoff appears to be imminent, as a few windows have already been delivered by Florida-based Glasswall LLC and several more are expected to be shipped later this week, according to the Journal. [WSJ] — Julie Strickland

Gavin Kaysen and 170 East 77th Street

Gavin Kaysen, the chef at the famed Café Boulud, is unloading his penthouse condominium at the Diamond House on the Upper East Side — all in an effort to relocate to Minneapolis and open his own restaurant.

Douglas Elliman brokers Shannon Dunne and Tristan Harper have the listing, at 170 East 77th Street between Lexington and Third avenues. The two-bedroom, two-bathroom unit, which spans 1,100 square feet, is asking $1.8 million. There are two terraces, one of which is on the roof.

In 2008, Ponzi schemer Bernie Madoff’s niece, Shana Madoff, and her husband, Eric Swanson, put a $4.195 million bid on a condo at the building, but withdrew the offer on December 11, the day Madoff was arrested, saying one of the bedrooms was too small. [NYP, 2nd item] — Mark Maurer

The most buzzworthy posts on The Real Deal’s Facebook page.

1. Glass lobby, penthouse revealed in first round of One Soho Square renderings
2. The real-life Wolf of Wall Street has some passed due bills…
3. Top dog developers — a look at the city’s most active builders

Like The Real Deal on Facebook for breaking industry stories, links to quirkier pieces and lively conversation about important properties in New York. [TRD’s Facebook Page]

From left: Michael Dubb, 101 Soundview Avenue and Jeff Klein

A Bronx condominium complex constructed by the Beechwood Organization snagged millions in tax benefits thanks to a last-minute bill added to the state’s $138 billion budget.

The deal for Harbor Pointe at Shorehaven Condominiums, located at 101 Soundview Avenue in the Bronx, will benefit the property’s 204 owners and was engineered by state Senate co-leader Jeff Klein, whose district includes the area.

Bronx Assemblyman Marcos Crespo told the Post that the de Blasio administration signed off on the deal, though the same piece of legislation stalled in the Assembly during the Bloomberg administration, which argued that the bill would cost taxpayers $17 million. The mayor’s office did not return emails from the Post seeking comment.

“By providing a retroactive benefit outside the normal confines of the section 421-a program, this bill would undermine the financial stability of the City of New York by incentivizing individual property owners to seek legislation to expand or enrich their as-of-right tax benefits,” Joseph Garba, then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s director of state legislative affairs, wrote in June 2013.

A spokesperson for Michael Dubb, Long Island-based Beechwood’s president, told the Post that the developer himself won’t benefit from the legislation, and said the 204 owners “should be treated like their neighbors,” many of whom “are first-time, working-class home buyers.”

Officials told the Post that owners who purchased their condominium properties back in 2009 would not be eligible for retroactive tax benefits. [NYP] — Julie Strickland