The BroadsheetDAILY ~ July 22, 2019

Stalled Tower at 125 Greenwich Street May Be Headed to Foreclosure

The 88-story building, where construction work has stalled due to financial setbacks, is slated to house more than 270 apartments.

The troubled residential tower at 125 Greenwich Street (near the corner of Thames Street) may be facing foreclosure by lenders who say the development team has defaulted on the terms of several mortgages.

In May, work stopped on the building (which topped out at 912 feet, or 88 stories, last year) when multiple construction contractors filed liens against the developers for some $40 million in unpaid fees. This prompted several creditors — most prominently, the United Overseas Bank — to file notice with New York courts that they are owed $199 million in mortgage payments. The bank’s overall loan to the developers of 125 Greenwich is more than $450 million, and it is only one of half a dozen creditors.

Much of this discord appears to stem from a slowing market for condominium apartments in Lower Manhattan, where ample supply (generated by the conversion, in recent years, of dozens of former office buildings to residential use) has led to slack demand and falling prices.

The 125 Greenwich development team estimates the project’s total worth (with more than 250 apartments, and some 13,000 square feet of retail space at its base) to be somewhere between $850 million and $1 billion, but realizing such a valuation may prove to be an elusive goal. And with fixed costs and debt topping out at more than $800 million, the margin for error on such a project is slim.

The new residential tower at 125 Greenwich Street soars more than 900 feet into the sky, but has a troubled history that may prove insurmountable as demand for condominiums in Lower Manhattan softens.

These astronomical costs were a remote prospect in 2012, when another team of developers (a partnership consisting of the Witkoff Group and Fisher Brothers) purchased the property for $87.5 million. Although they originally planned to erect a residential tower of their own on the 9,000-square-foot site (initially planned to be as tall as 1,400 feet), they decided instead to accept an offer of $180 million from the current development team (a partnership originally led by builder Michael Shvo, who subsequently left the project) in 2014.

Before the previous owners bought the site, 125 Greenwich was home to a ten-story Romanesque revival building that housed Western Electric, the manufacturing arm of American Telephone & Telegraph, which used the building as a factory to build telephone equipment. This building was opened in 1889. Although local leaders tried in 2012 to persuade the City’s Landmarks Preservation Commission to grant the structure protected status, it was demolished the following year.

A foreclosure auction is currently scheduled for mid-August, but the developers are reported to be scrambling to put together a new package of debt and investment that would stave off such a development.

To Broadsheet Editor;

re: BroadsheetDAILY “The BPCA Gets a Credit Limit Increase” July 16, 2019

It is interesting to see that the Battery Park City Authority will be getting half a billion dollars to protect the community from climate change, which it will mostly spend on building flood barriers that will exacerbate climate change. Relatively little will be spent on actually stopping climate change.

If this were only happening in Battery Park City, it might not be a major issue. But this is not the case. The same is occurring in the Financial District, in the Lower East Side, elsewhere in the city, and nationwide. Almost all of the hundreds of billions of dollars of public funding that is being allocated to address climate change in the US is being used to buy a lot of concrete and steel, which will emit a lot of greenhouse gases, and provide short-term protection at best.

Arguably, this is what happens when one tries to address a global problem at the local level. Everybody has an incentive to protect their little patch, and not to worry about the larger whole. But if we were to instead spend the same many billions of dollars on actually stopping climate change, we could probably do it.

It is a bit like going to the moon. All it takes is some people in power with a vision and a will. The money is there, and if given the chance the American people can solve almost any technical problem.

July 22 – August 4, 2019

The Eagle Prepares to Land – The Apollo 11 Lunar Module Eagle,in a landing configuration was photographed in lunar orbit from the Command and Service Module Columbia. Inside the Lunar Module were Commander Neil A. Armstrong and Lunar Module Pilot Buzz Aldrin. Photo: NASA

It was a three-day journey from Earth to the Moon for the three Apollo 11 astronauts aboard the spaceship, or command module, Columbia, headed for the first landing of humans on the moon. Columbia – named for the historical epithet for the Americas – lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida on the morning of July 16, 1969. Soon after launch, Columbia docked with the lunar module, the Eagle, a vehicle designed to land two of the astronauts on the Moon while the third stayed with Columbia until the moonwalk was completed.

On July 19 fifty years ago, the 240,250 mile voyage almost accomplished, Columbia orbited the Moon 30 times, piloted by astronaut Michael Collins. Next day, July 20, astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin (Buzz) Aldrin left the command module and climbed into the lunar module, which they navigated and touched down on the lava plain Mare Tranquillitatis, near the lunar equator, at 4:18pm. EDT. Broadcasting to Earth, Armstrong’s first words were, “Houston, Tranquility Base here, the Eagle has landed.”

Aldrin Gazes at Tranquility Base – Astronaut and Lunar Module pilot Buzz Aldrin is pictured during the Apollo 11 extravehicular activity on the moon. He had just deployed the Early Apollo Scientific Experiments Package. In the foreground is the Passive Seismic Experiment Package, beyond it is the Laser Ranging Retro-Reflector (LR-3). Photo: NASA

Too excited to take their scheduled rest, they prepared to carry out the culmination of their monumental and heroic mission. Six and a half hours after landing, Armstrong stepped onto the Moon saying, “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.” He had unveiled a plaque affixed to the Eagle that bore the inscription, “Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the Moon, July 1969 A.D. We came in peace for all mankind.” Aldrin and Armstrong collected samples of rock and regolith weighing nearly 49 pounds. They left a United States flag on the Moon, a gesture that has been described as leaving a record, not asserting possession.

Apollo 11 Comes Home – The Apollo 11 crew await pickup by a helicopter from the USS Hornet,  prime recovery ship for the historic lunar landing mission. The fourth man in the life raft is a United States Navy underwater demolition team swimmer. All four men are wearing biological isolation garments. Photo: NASA

The moonwalk lasted two and one half hours after which the two slept in their lunar craft for 7 hours before preparing to rejoin Collins on Columbia. They had been on the Moon for 21 hours 36 minutes. By July 22, fifty years ago today, Collins, Aldrin and Armstrong were on their way home. On July 24, 1969, Columbia splashed down in the Pacific Ocean.

Look for moonrise in the east between midnight and 1am early this week.

Find the daytime gibbous moon rather high in the blue sky to the south during the early morning hours and westerly until about noon.

Honoring a Matriarch of the Hudson

	River Project’s Cathy Drew

Tonight, Monday (July 22), the River Project will host its 2019 Summer Cruise, raising funds for the highly regarded, Lower Manhattan-based non-profit that aims to protect and restore the ecosystem of the Hudson River Estuary through scientific research and education programs.

The evening will honor retiring executive director Cathy Drew, who founded the River Project in 1986.

Her vision and leadership, among other accomplishments, helped pass legislation that made the Hudson River Park an estuarine sanctuary in 1998. This legal designation was based, in part, on fish ecology data that Ms. Drew helped compile through her research in the Hudson.

Monday evening’s program begins with boarding and cocktails at 5:30 pm, followed by a dinner cruise from 7:00 to 9:00 pm. For more info, please browse: www.riverprojectnyc.org/events.

New Artist Work Space in World Trade Center Part of Creative Surge in Lower Manhattan

	A rendering of the artist work space now being readied

Silver Art Projects, a public service project supported by Silverstein Properties(operator of the World Trade Center complex) is kicking off a new artist residency program at Three World Trade Center.

Under this initiative, dozens of artists (working across a broad range of media and disciplines) will be invited to share more than 40,000 square feet of free studio space on the tower’s 50th floor, which will be given over in its entirety to this program.

Former Governors Island Overseer Takes Helm at World Trade Center Performance Venue

	Leslie Koch

The Ronald O. Perelman Performing Arts Center, now under construction at the World Trade Center, has a new president — Leslie Koch. Ms. Koch will be most familiar to Lower Manhattan residents as the guiding hand behind the Trust for Governors Island.

Her decade-long tenure there, which saw seasonal visitation rise from 8,000 per season to more than 600,000, ended in 2016.   To read more…

Albany Legislature Okays Half a Billion in New Bond Debt for BPCA

The State legislature has enacted a measure that will allow the Battery Park City Authority to take on up to half a billion dollars in new bond debt, in order to fund resiliency measures throughout the community, as well as to underwrite other capital projects.

The bill, sponsored in the Assembly by Yuh-Line Niou (who represents Battery Park City south of Vesey Street) and in the Senate by Brian Kavanagh (who represents all of Battery Park City), grants permission to the Authority… 

Federal Report Foresees More Frequent Flooding for Lower Manhattan

Superstorm Sandy floods West Street

Many ships pass Lower Manhattan on their way to and from the Midtown Passenger Ship Terminal.  Others may be seen on their way to or from piers in Brooklyn and Bayonne.  Stated times, when appropriate, are for passing the Colgate clock in Jersey City, New Jersey, and are based on sighting histories, published schedules and intuition. They are also subject to tides, fog, winds, freak waves, hurricanes and the whims of upper management.

The Tale of the Ticker Tape,

or How Adversity and Spontaneity

Hatched a New York Tradition

What was Planned as a Grand Affair became a Comedy of Errors

	New York’s first ticker-tape parade erupted spontaneously from bad weather and an over-zealous stockbroker.

While the festivities in New York Harbor didn’t go as scripted that afternoon, the spontaneous gesture it generated from the brokerage houses lining Broadway famously lives on more than a century later.

     On October 28, 1886, Liberty Enlightening the World was to be unveiled to New York City and the world as it stood atop its tall base on Bedloe’s Island. But the morning mist had turned to afternoon fog, blurring the view of the statue from revelers on the Manhattan shore and the long parade of three hundred ships on the Hudson River.

State Lawmakers Bark ‘Belay That’ to Water-Borne Marketing Messages

	The advertising barges operated by Ballyhoo Media

The ubiquitous advertising barges that have become anathema for Lower Manhattan residents over the past year have attracted hostile attention from members of the State Senate and Assembly.

Bills were enacted in the closing days of the legislative session that would ban the 60-foot catamaran — bearing an electronic sign capable of rendering high-definition, full-motion video, similar to the “jumbo-tron” panels that adorn multiple buildings in Times Square — from continuing to conduct its business in New York’s waters.

Governors Island Passengers Are Going in Style with Launch of New Vessel

	Governors1

Visitors to Governors Islandembarking from Lower Manhattan now have a new way to get to the beloved greensward that has become Downtown’s equivalent of Central Park.

The new vessel, Governors 1, a 132-foot-long, 40-foot-wide ferry was built over the last two years at a cost of $9.2 million in the Warren, Rhode Island shipyard of Blount Boats, from a design by Seattle-based Elliott Bay Design Group.

Concerns about Crowding and Noise Surround City Hall Plan for New Staten Island Route to Battery Park City

The administration of Mayor Bill de Blasio is planning to launch in 2020 a new ferry service from Staten Island that will bring to the Battery Park City ferry terminal more than 60 new vessels each day, carrying as many as 2,500 passengers.

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Local Leaders Raise Concerns about Traffic and Crowding from Planned Events Venue at Brookfield

	Brookfield Place