Results tagged “garybarnett”

The New York Times describes a trend towards families with multiple children and a lot of money opting out of moving to large houses in the suburbs like Westchester. Instead, they are buying multiple adjacent residences in Manhattan highrises and shaping their own 4,000 to 8,500 square foot homes in the city. The Times dubs them Mansions in the Sky. The floorplan above is the "after" portion from the Times graphic of a man who combined five apartments and a studio into one very large four-bedroom home.

In the crossroads of the "Can't Beat 'Em, So Join 'Em" chronicles and the "____ Diner, R.I.P." annals, there's is the Moondance Diner. The NY Sun reports the SoHo fixture will be razed for - you guessed it - luxury condos. But that's not all: Moondance owner Sunil "Sunny" Sharma was originally going to sell the property, but decided to develop it himself with Extell's Gary Barnett and others.

Aw, Gary Barnett is making sure Jay-Z might still get to wear a Brooklyn Nets jersey: The rival bid from Extell for the Brooklyn railyards is offering a compromise to give Bruce Ratner's team a chance to build the Nets arena if the Extell plan (a considerably less extensive complex) can get built. The NY Times reports that Extell would sell the arena land to Ratner if the Extell bid wins, which is a nice PR move for Extell to combat the people who dislike their plan since it keeps a sports team from coming back to Brooklyn. According to reports, Ratner is saying that his plan offers more transit infrastructure support, jobs, and housing. In the meantime, it seems like Mayor Bloomberg's people on the MTA board will vote in favor of Ratner's plan. What's interesting is that even if the MTA votes to accept a bid at tomorrow's vote, the MTA can still further negotiate with the winning bid on a price. Gothamist loves that, but given that the MTA was willing to accept $100 million for the worth-at-least $300 million West Side railyards, it doesn't seem like the MTA is very good at negotiating.

Clearly, the new kind of excitement and titillation in New York City is not downtown or in some underground sex trade - it's at MTA railyard auctions! The Extell Development Company made a surprise bid for the Atlantic Rail Yards where Bruce Ratner wants to build a Frank Gehry-designed Nets arena and skyscraper complex. Extell's bid promises to be a much smaller development: Skyscrapers would be 28 floors, versus the possible 60 floors in Ratner's plan; housing would be for 4,800 people, versus Ratner's housing for a projected 18,000; and there is room for a school, but no sports complex. And this bid doesn't require $200 million in state and city subsidies and would be completed in 2009, two years before the Ratner plan. Extell got involved when community groups opposed to Ratner's plans approached them and the Post notes that the firm is "positioning itself as a community-friendly alternative to Ratner, claiming its bid would not require the seizure of any private real estate, as Ratner's would." That is as community friendly as you can get: "We're not forcing you out of your homes." Neither Extell nor Ratner's Forest City Ratner group will reveal how much their bids were for. Let's say the Extell bid proves successful; what about all the buildings Ratner has purchased in the area? Would Extell need to buy them from him? MTA Chairman Peter Kalikow - you're in the catbird seat once again.