Harlem’s 125th Street Garage Complex

Over the past decade, an underutilized garage on West 125^th Street in Harlem has gradually been transformed into a bustling office and retail space, with more plans for a cultural center and affordable housing on the horizon.

In 1999, Gov. George Pataki announced a plan to transform the largely dormant space into a new multipurpose complex.  Shortly after, developers broke ground on a 110,000-square-foot retail center.   Planned changes to the site did raise some initial concern. Harlem Assemblyman Keith Wright, chairman of the Harlem Community Development Corporation said:

“The number of economic development projects currently moving forward in Harlem have brought new life to our community, but they must find harmony with our current residents and businesses to be truly successful.”

121 West 125th Street Garage Complex

In early 2012, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Gov. Andrew Cuomo revealed new additions to the site.  The City planned to build a $225 million cultural complex, the Urban League Empowerment Center, which plans to house the headquarters of the National Urban League – the nation’s largest civil-rights organization – as well as the City’s first civil rights museum.

Affordable housing will also be part of the project.  Adjacent to the complex will be a 114-unit residential tower split among a variety of incomes using a 50-30-20 model, in which 50 percent of units will be market rate, 30 percent will be affordable and 20 percent will be set aside for low-income residents.

The development is the latest in a long line of projects along the 125^th Street corridor. The street was rezoned in 2008 to make way for more high-rise developments, and new proposals since then have included plans to transform the Taystee Bakery site into a new office and industrial complex and a proposal to redevelop the vacant Corn Exchange Building into a retail property.

Leonard Grunstein helped design the air rights structure for the office tower portion of the complex.

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Leonard Grunstein’s Blueprint for New Housing

In a Crain’s article, Leonard Grunstein gives his blueprint guide to jump the redevelopment in New York City.  He points out that the NYC Housing Authority has numerous properties desperately in need of redevelopment.  Grunstein stresses that the issue is not being able to build new developments, but being able to focus on improving what already exists.

Grunstein’s five strategies to redevelopment:

1. The city should use modern tools such as public-private partnerships to finance the redevelopment of properties.  Similar methods of accessing the capital market are more sustainable and avoid the need for massive public subsidies.
   Example: Battery Park City is made up of a partnership through private developers and the Battery Park City Authority, the state and the city of New York.  It was created as an integrated mixed-income and mixed-use community. The redevelopment plan engaged the financeable ground lease as a public-private partnership.
   

   Battery Park City

2. The city should take advantage of federal grants to consider renewing aging complexes.  Cities such as Chicago and Boston have received sizable federal grants from the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
3. Encourage existing developments to embrace a more diverse and functional development, with a wider range of incomes by incorporating the “80/20” model, (allows developers to build taller structures if 20% of units are affordable) or a step further with a “50/30/20” program that would set aside 50% for luxury units, 30% for middle-income units, and 20% for low-income units.
4. Avoid limiting exisiting developments to one use. Variety of uses (housing, retail, etc.) helps fuel revitalization, and enhances the development as a whole.
   Example: Buildings in the the meatpacking district, host restaurants, “mom-and-pop” shops, and cultural institutions.
5. Provide developers with more flexibility.  Regulations should be scaled back by city leaders, including phasing out zone and density restrictions that have become obsolete. The initiative should be modeled after the Battery Park City Example.

Read Leonard Grunstein’s full article on Crain’s.

The Worldwide Plaza

The Worldwide Plaza is a collection of office and residential buildings occupying a city block in West Midtown. First constructed in 1989, the complex has gone through a multitude of owners in its 24-year history, inspiring one reporter to write, “[I]ts long list of suitors has made it the Elizabeth Taylor of the New York office building world.”

The office condominium portion of the building, first sold to Blackstone and then subsequently to Sam Zell’s Equity Office REIT, in 1998. Leonard Grunstein helped conceive and negotiate the financeable and tax-advantaged structure that enabled the sale, while retaining the retail condominium portion of the building under a financed net lease structure.

The original building was developed by William Zeckendorf Jr. and designed by David Childs, the architect who would go on to design One World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan. The space had formerly housed the third Madison Square Garden, site of Marilyn Monroe’s infamous birthday serenade to President John Kennedy. After the Garden moved south to its present location, the area fell into disrepair. Zeckendorf, predicting the neighborhood was due for a rebirth, took a gamble and purchased the site. His bet paid off, and the building soon attracted prominent tenants such as white-shoe law firm Cravath Swaine & Moore, and Ogilvy Mather, an international advertising agency.

An economic downturn in the early 1990s took a toll on the building and forced a sell-off to the Blackstone Group in 1996. Throughout the next decade, the complex went through several different owners, including Sam Zell’s Equity Office Properties Trust and Deutsche Bank. The property’s price ultimately reached a high of $1.74 billion in a 2007 sale. The most recent economic recession once again took a toll on the plaza, and in 2009, George Comfort & Sons scooped up the complex for a bargain rate of $600 million. The property has since regained value and is now hotly contested by two major investors, Nicholas Schorsch and Scott Rechler.

The buildings in the complex encircle a public plaza, whose focal point is the “Four Seasons” fountain designed by famed sculptor Sidney Simon. The plaza also contains a café and an Off-Broadway theater space below ground.

The New York Theological Seminary: Grunstein Negotiates Lease

The New York Theological Seminary, a center for theological study in Morningside Heights, has educated generations of church leaders since its founding in 1900.

Real Estate Law Expert Leonard Grunstein handled the sale of the New York Theological Seminary building to a well-known developer skilled in the adaptive reuse of existing buildings. The seminary building was gut-rehabbed and recreated as a residential apartment complex. Mr. Grunstein also negotiated the lease that allowed the seminary to relocate to the Marble Collegiate Church.

The school was set up by Wilbert Webster White, an educator and scholar who envisioned a curriculum that emphasized practical ministry training and study of the Bible in the students’ own languages. From the beginning, White aimed to create a school that would incorporate a Bible school-type education into a university system. The school was distinguished by its acceptance of both men and women, as well as for its diversity, with a wide range of races, cultures and religious denominations represented among the student body.

As the demographics of New York City began to change in the 1970s and 1980s, the school adapted in response, under the direction of another acclaimed educator, George Webber. Instruction in Spanish and Korean was incorporated into the curriculum, and new programs on nights and weekends were added for the benefit of working urban ministers who sought more formal training. Under Webber, the school became a hub for black, Hispanic, and female students, and enrollment doubled.

The school also launched a Master’s program inside the Sing Sing Correctional Facility to train inmates in the New York State Correctional System for ministry. The program has since earned acclaim, with graduates seeing far lower recidivism rates than the overall prison population.

The seminary has been located in a number of sites around the city during its history. It was previously located in a building that housed the school as well as a dormitory. As its mission evolved, it no longer needed so large a structure. The building was sold and the school relocated, first to the office tower within the Marble Collegiate Church in Midtown and subsequently to its present location on Riverside Drive in 2002.