The BroadsheetDAILY – 1/11/22 – Lower Manhattan’s Local Newspaper – Lower Manhattan Site Purchased for $390 Million Being Shopped for Half-Off

The Broadsheet: Lower Manhattan’s Local Newspaper

What Never Went Up in the First Place, Still Comes Down…

Lower Manhattan Site Purchased for $390 Million Being Shopped for Half-Off

A rendering for the super-tall tower once proposed for 80 South Street, a lot that is now for sale at a fraction of the price paid by the financially troubled conglomerate that bought it five years ago.

In a story first reported by the Real Deal, the financial distress plaguing property investment firm China Oceanwide Holdings (itself part of the wider contagion surrounding Shenzhen-based real estate firm, Evergrande) has led to a fire-sale price for a trophy Lower Manhattan parcel.

The company purchased 80 South Street (located between John Street and Maiden Lane) from the Howard Hughes Corporation in 2016 for $390 million. This transaction included a companion site, at 163 Front Street, that shares a mid-block border with 80 South Street. The combined parcel, plus air rights from nearby lots purchased and assembled by Howard Hughes, gave China Oceanwide the right to build a tower with a height of more than 1,400 feet, enclosing more than one million square feet of interior space.

Within months, China Oceanwide filed preliminary designs with the City, and obtained permission to begin demolishing the small legacy structure on the two lots. But the only substantive activity that followed consisted of the company taking out a $175 million loan against the vacant property.

By 2020, the COVID pandemic had begun to dampen the speculative value of urban properties, and China Oceanwide was starting to teeter beneath a mountain of debt. Last October, another trophy property slated for development by the firm, its Oceanwide Center in San Francisco, was seized by creditors.

A few days later, Oceanwide Holdings quietly began shopping 80 South Street to prospective buyers. Its asking price is reportedly $200 million—a discount of $190 million (or 48 percent) from the price it paid five years earlier.

The winner in this saga may turn out to be the Howard Hughes Corporation, which is also in the midst of several development projects at the nearby South Street Seaport. That company had purchased 80 South Street for $100 million in 2015, before unloading it to China Oceanwide, just over a year later, at almost four times that price.

Matthew Fenton

‘I Don’t Believe in Building New Jails’

New Council Member on Development and Diversity, Prison Plans and Affordability

Newly inaugurated City Council member Christopher Marte reflected on the Lower Manhattan district he now represents, and some of the issues facing the community, in a January 4 interview with WNYC radio.

“We have some of the wealthiest [residents] in Battery Park City and Tribeca,” Mr. Marte told host Brian Lehrer, “but we have people who live beneath or close to the poverty line, whether it’s in the Smith houses, or people who live in rent-stabilized apartments. And they come from all over the world. There are the Fujianese community on East Broadway, and Dominicans, Puerto Ricans.”

CLASSIFIEDS & PERSONALS

Swaps & Trades, Respectable Employment, Lost and Found

To place a listing, contact editor@ebroadsheet.com

This Week’s Calendar

TUESDAY JANUARY 11

2PM

Museum of Jewish Heritage

Nate Leipciger was born to a Jewish family in Chorzów, Poland in 1928. When he was eleven years old, the Nazis invaded, and Nate and his family spent the next three years living in ghettos. The family was later deported to Auschwitz, where Nate was separated from his mother and sister. He would never see them again. By the time he was liberated in 1945, Nate had survived seven different concentration camps. Nate and his father, the only remaining survivors of their family, moved to Canada in 1948. He became a successful engineer, married, and had three daughters. Join the Museum for a program exploring Nate’s experiences during the Holocaust. Free suggested $10 donation

6:30PM

Fraunces Tavern Museum

Pick out your favorite dessert and join Fraunces Tavern Museum and Keeler Tavern Museum & History Center in exploring different varieties of desserts from colonial North America, including those created by Samuel Fraunces himself. This program will take place via Zoom, and advance registration is required. Free; suggested donation of $10

6PM

Community Board Youth & Education Committee

Live Remote Meeting – https://live.mcb1.nyc

AGENDA

1. Advocating for a Full Size Gym for P.S. 150 – Resolution

WEDNESDAY JANUARY 12

6PM

Community Board 1 Licensing & Permits Committee

Live Remote Meeting – https://live.mcb1.nyc

THURSDAY JANUARY 13

12NOON

China Institute

Join China expert and diplomat Nicholas Platt, who will share the story of the Philadelphia Orchestra’s 1973 trip to China at Richard Nixon’s behest. Platt, who was the Foreign Service Control Officer for that historic visit, handled the negotiations—with plenty of challenges on both the American and the Chinese sides.

6PM

Community Board 1Landmarks & Preservation Committee

Live Remote Meeting – https://live.mcb1.nyc

1. Agenda to be determined

6:30PM

Fraunces Tavern Museum

In this lecture, Desmarais will discuss recent discoveries about the Count de Rochambeau’s army that counter popular assumptions—focusing primarily on the recently published diary of the Count de Lauberdière, which includes details that are not covered in any other French diaries. Serving as an aide-de-camp on General Rochambeau’s staff, the young and well-educated Lauberdière provided a unique perspective of the war, including descriptions of the French army’s camp in Newport, the long march to Yorktown, the siege and capture, and a fascinating examination of the people and their distinctive colonial culture. This lecture will take place via Zoom. Free

6:30PM – 7:45PM

Trinity Church

Online discussion

The pandemic has highlighted health inequities that disproportionately impact vulnerable populations by creating and exacerbating poverty and leading to decreased life expectancy throughout the world. Join the Rev. Phillip Jackson as he speaks to leaders and experts, exploring how people of faith can advocate for those most affected by these inequities. Free

7PM – 8:30PM

Battery Park City Authority

Online film streaming. Part concert film and part comedy, Rock ‘n’ Roll High School (1979, Allan Arkush) is about a student who leads a rock rebellion against the school administration with help from the Ramones. Registration required. Free

7PM

Museum of Jewish Heritage

During the last year of her life, Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg sat down with Moment editor-in-chief Nadine Epstein to discuss the Jewish women she found inspiring. In Epstein’s new intergenerational book RBG’s Brave and Brilliant Women: 33 Jewish Women to Inspire Everyone, she profiles the women Ginsburg identified and reflects on each of their stories. The trailblazers in the book, like Ginsburg herself, each fought to forge a better world rather than accepting it as it was. Join the Museum of Jewish Heritage and Moment for a program celebrating RBG’s Brave and Brilliant Women, featuring Epstein in conversation with author and journalist Abigail Pogrebin.Free; suggested $10 donation

Alan Davis

In Memoriam

Alan Davis passed away on December 9th, 2021 after a six-month long battle with pancreatic cancer.

Known for his wit and signature English humor, Alan moved from London to New York City in 1982 while working for Johnson Matthey Commodities. Initially starting out as Senior Silver Trader, Alan soon worked his way up to Gold Trader, Chief Trader, and Senior Vice President.

The trading room desk at 1 World Trade Center overlooked Battery Park City, and Alan would often look out the window and watch Gateway Plaza being built, blissfully unaware that he would eventually move into the 600 building with his co-worker and future wife, Judi.

Alan and Judi married in 1992, and in 1997 their son Sam was born. Alan would later work as a broker at COMEX until his retirement a few years ago.

Alan loved everything about Battery Park City. Even while his physical health was declining, he did his best to make trips to the park with a cup of coffee or to the local bar enjoying a beer.

A medical anomaly, Alan spent his entire life dealing with health problems. As his son would put it, his medical history was pretty much everything but the Bubonic Plague. Ranging from receiving a miracle Kidney/Pancreas transplant 24 years ago, to walking around for several weeks after a massive heart attack which required a quadruple bypass, Alan always managed to defy the odds. And even in the face of terminal cancer and despite being 69 years old and spending his last few months receiving chemotherapy, Alan somehow never lost his head of hair.

Alan Davis is survived by his wife – Judi – of 29 years, and their son Sam, who love him almost as much as he loved them.

Jitney Redux

Alliance Explains Cessation and Restoration of Shuttle Service

After restarting the Downtown Connection shuttle bus program on Monday, the Downtown Alliance (which operates the service) sent a representative to the Wednesday meeting of the Battery Park City Committee of Community Board 1 (CB1) to offer background on why it had been on hiatus.

Taina Prado, the Alliance’s chief of staff, began with some history. “Following the height of COVID, our original bus operator, Golden Touch went out of business. They just couldn’t survive the pandemic.”

“In September, as many people noticed, the buses switched from red to the white,” Ms. Prado recounted.

An Aversion to Immersion

SLA Okays New Performance Venue in FiDi, Despite Opposition from Local Leaders

Over the objections of Community Board 1 (CB1) and hundreds of local residents, the State Liquor Authority (SLA) has approved the application for a license to serve alcohol by Submursive, a production company that wants to open a 100,000-square-foot performance venue, spread across seven floors of 20 Exchange Place, in the Financial District.

A New Aerie at the Former Home of Area

A Onetime Haunt of Ponies, Plutocrats, and Club Rats Will Get a Room with a View

Tribeca will soon have a new (albeit invisible) penthouse apartment, if the City’s Landmarks Preservation Commission is guided by the advice of Community Board 1. At its November meeting, the Board recommended that the LPC give its okay to a proposal to add a rooftop structure to 157 Hudson Street, located between Laight and Hubert Streets, opposite the Holland Tunnel rotary.

The T-shaped building has a storied history. Erected in 1867, it was originally designed to serve as a multi-story stable for the hundreds of draft horses kept at the ready by the newly founded American Express Company. This was an era when the firm was primarily engaged in the secure shipment of valuable cargo, almost a century before the invention of credit cards. To read more…

Where to Figure Out How to Save the World

Plan for Climate Solutions Center on Governors Island Advances

In one of its last official acts before departing City Hall on December 31, the administration of then-Mayor Bill de Blasio selected four finalists in the competition to build a Center for Climate Solutions on Governors Island.

The competition, announced in 2020 and formally launched a year later, envisions combining interdisciplinary research with education and public engagement in a single physical hub. Universities from around the world were invited to submit proposals in the first stage, called a “request for expressions of interest.” A dozen plans were submitted, and four of these were deemed worthy of moving to the final round. To read more…

‘One False Promise After Another’

Lenders Who Fronted Millions to Operators of Pier A Allege Fraud

Investors who lent more than $16 million to the operators behind the shuttered restaurant at Pier A, on Battery Park City’s southern border allege that the borrowers, “used a fraudulent scheme to squeeze out of the Project all the fees and distributions for themselves that they could before shutting the doors.”

In a development first reported by property industry newsletter the Real Deal, the lenders (Tribeca-based New York City Waterfront Development Fund II) filed suit in Manhattan Supreme Court in November, seeking the return of $16.5 million (the original amount of the 2011 loan, none of which has been repaid), along with $2.63 million in accrued interest, plus attorney’s fees and court costs.

The defendants in this action are a partnership between the Poulakakos restaurant family (who operate numerous Lower Manhattan eateries) and the Dermot Company (a developer of garden apartment complexes around the United States that more recently branched out to New York projects, such as the conversion of Brooklyn’s landmarked Williamsburgh Savings Bank tower into condominium residences). To read more…

Lower Manhattan Greenmarkets

Tribeca Greenmarket

Greenwich Street & Chambers Street

Every Wednesday & Saturday, 8am-3pm

Food Scrap Collection: Saturdays, 8am-1pm

Open Saturdays and Wednesdays year round

Bowling Green Greenmarket

Green Greenmarket at Bowling Green

Broadway & Whitehall St

Open Tuesday and Thursdays, year-round

Market Hours: 8:00 a.m. – 5:00 p.m.

Compost Program: 8 a.m. – 11 a.m.

The Bowling Green Greenmarket brings fresh offerings from local farms to Lower Manhattan’s historic Bowling Green plaza. Twice a week year-round stop by to load up on the season’s freshest fruit, crisp vegetables, beautiful plants, and freshly baked loaves of bread, quiches, and pot pies.

Greenmarket at the Oculus

Oculus Plaza, Fulton St and Church St

CLOSED FOR THE SEASON

The Outdoor Fulton Stall Market

91 South St., bet. Fulton & John Sts.

212-349-1380 info@fultonstallmarket.org

Fulton Street cobblestones between South and Front Sts. across from McNally Jackson Bookstore.

Locally grown produce from Rogowski Farm, Breezy Hill Orchard, and other farmers and small-batch specialty food products, sold directly by their producers. Producers vary from week to week.

SNAP/EBT/P-EBT, Debit/Credit, and Farmers Market Nutrition Program checks accepted at all farmers markets.

TODAY IN HISTORY

January 11

In 1935, Amelia Earhart becomes the first person to fly solo from Hawaii to California.

532 – Nika riots in Constantinople: A quarrel between supporters of different chariot teams—the Blues and the Greens—in the Hippodrome escalates into violence.

630 – Conquest of Mecca: The prophet Muhammad and his followers conquer the city, Quraysh surrender.

1693 – A powerful earthquake destroys parts of Sicily and Malta.

1759 – In Philadelphia, the first American life insurance company is incorporated.

1787 – William Herschel discovers Titania and Oberon, two moons of Uranus.

1908 – Grand Canyon National Monument is created.

1922 – First use of insulin to treat diabetes in a human patient.

1935 – Amelia Earhart becomes the first person to fly solo from Hawaii to California.

1943 – Italian-American anarchist Carlo Tresca is assassinated in New York City.

1961 – Throgs Neck Bridge over the East River, linking New York City’s boroughs of The Bronx and Queens, opens to road traffic.

1964 – Surgeon General of the United States Dr. Luther Terry, M.D., publishes the landmark report Smoking and Health: Report of the Advisory Committee to the Surgeon General of the United States saying that smoking may be hazardous to health, sparking national and worldwide anti-smoking efforts.

Alexander Hamilton founded the United States Coast Guard, and the New York Post newspaper.  He was the first treasury secretary and leading force of the economic policies of the administration of President George Washington. His vision for the new country was one of a strong central government, a commercial economy supporting manufacturing, and a strong national defense. Portrait of Alexander Hamilton by John Trumbull, 1806

Births

1755 – Alexander Hamilton, general, economist and politician, first US Secretary of the Treasury (d. 1804)

1870 – Alexander Stirling Calder, American sculptor and educator (d. 1945)

1906 – Albert Hofmann, Swiss chemist and academic, discoverer of LSD (d. 2008)

1923 – Carroll Shelby, race car driver, engineer, businessman, founded Carroll Shelby International (d. 2012)

Deaths

1546 – Gaudenzio Ferrari, Italian painter and sculptor (b. c. 1471)

1791 – William Williams Pantycelyn, Welsh composer and poet (b. 1717)

1843 – Francis Scott Key, American lawyer, author, and songwriter (b. 1779)

1928 – Thomas Hardy, English novelist and poet (b. 1840)

1966 – Alberto Giacometti, Swiss sculptor and painter (b. 1901)

1980 – Barbara Pym, English author (b. 1913)

2008 – Edmund Hillary, New Zealand mountaineer and explorer (b. 1919)

Credit: Wikipedia and other internet and non-internet sources

The Broadsheet Inc. eBroadsheet.com editor @ ebroadsheet.com ©2022 All Rights Reserved

No part of this document may be reproduced without the written permission of the publisher © 2022