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September 17, 2014- Opinion by Steven E. Greer
With the imminent foreclosure of the fancy Trump SoHo in the news, one has to wonder whether all of the dozens of other newly built residential and commercial properties Downtown will really sell. If they build it, will people really come?
The World Trade Center towers are most empty and unleased. It looks as if government agencies will be the main occupants.
The Brookfield Place renovation has also having trouble attracting corporate tenants. The deals announced so far have been obtained only after giving away years of free occupancy. Some tenants have even left Brookfield after just a few months of moving in.
What about those 1000-feet high residential buildings going up all over? Will those really sell condos, or will they all be rentals? Will the condo conversions taking place in Battery Park sell their units, or will they become distressed properties like 225 Rector was?
The Ritz-Carlton residential property in south BPC can’t sell the most expensive units, and a realtor resorted to PR stunts to try to move things. They conned CNBC and others into hyping several adjacent apartments as being one big “most expensive apartment in New York”.
One thing is for sure: When Janet Yellen raises the interest rates, the entire real estate bubble will deflate once again. The billionaire foreign investors purchasing trophy apartments for tens of millions will go away. It will be 2007 all over again.
Your site is so incredibly bitter and negative.
The WTC is already a huge success; especially considering all the challenges it faced.
How do you figure the WTC is MOSTLY empty when 1 WTC is 65% full and 4 WTC is 55% full.
3 WTC has an anchor tenant, but won’t be completed for another 3 years.
There is NO doubt that it too will be mostly filled by the time it opens, as the WTC site blossoms with the opening of the new PATH Station and the new WTC Shopping Center coupled with the newly invigorated Brookfield Place which has filled millions of square feet of empty space in just the last year with the moves of Jones Day, Hudson’s Bay and Time Inc to the complex.
90% of the retail at Brookfield Place is spoken for as is almost all of the space at the WTC retail.
Nordstrom will likely join Saks downtown as well.
The South Street Seaport will also be booming very shortly as it debuts NY’s most luxurious movie complex and a brand new and exciting Pier 17 that will appeal to area residents.
The Trump SoHo has NOTHING to do with downtown. It is a hybrid Condo/Hotel concept that failed on its own demerits.
FiDi is rapidly transforming into New York’s newest 24/7 community with almost 2MM square feet of new retail, 18 new hotels, 3,000 new apartments (split evenly between condos and rentals), new schools (public and private), millions of square feet of new Class A Office space and lots of new restaurants.
This is all happening because people have faith in this community.
It’s why I moved down here and we have succeeded in building an amazing community. So sad that you can’t see it.
To DTNYC
You seem to be making the case for me. 1 WTC only has Conde Nast because they gave them free rent.
3 WTC years away, 4 WTC not nearly filled, all of the Seaport is years away.
Brookfield claiming to be 90% full is just a lie. Again, big tenants, such as Time, are there only because they got free rent.
All real estate companies lie about being 90% full and signed.
Brookfield Place is years past schedule and still years away.
FiDi has about ten huge condo projects under construction and they are all unsold.