BXP has chosen to go vertical at its 930K sf NYC office project at 343 Madison, the REIT announced this week. That’s even as its pension fund partner Norges 🇳🇴 🛢 has opted to wish it well from the sidelines, selling back its 45% equity stake in the development to BXP for $43.5M and fully recouping its total investment since it came on board in ‘17. That means BXP will go it alone (for now) on the pricey (est. $2,100/ 🦶 dev cost) 46-story project, but there are good reasons for its courage. One, Manhattan net absorption (kinda the only metric that matters in office leasing) YTD was 5.17M sf as of Q2, the highest level since ‘00. And two, BXP might have already reeled in a potential large tenant: it announced that a financial institution has signed an LOI for 30% of the tower, in the lower-middle section. 🎣

BXP declined to name the institution. But there’s been chatter about it trading paper w/ quite the 🐳 : Bank of America. 🇺🇸

Our special episode on Related’s de-risking playbook at Hudson Yards is now live. Come for gems such as the baby 🐐’s early bailout by his uncle & Jorge Perez, stay for insider insights on how HY was structured to allow Related to continuously take chips off the table. Listen on Spotify here, YouTube here or Apple Podcasts here. Sponsored by: Vesto

BofA is currently HQ’d at Durst’s One Bryant Park, where it reportedly has 1.6M sf and is also a part owner of the leasehold and lender. (The land there is owned by Empire State Development, which ground-leased it to the sponsors in ‘04). Since BofA has kept expanding within the property, it’s tricky to get an accurate picture of the current state of play. But we have some snippets: CompStak data show that is paying in the $180s/ 🦶 for 70K sf of that space on floors 40 & 47, set to expire in 2033.

BXP is slated to deliver 343 Madison in late ‘29, so that timing would work. The MTA owns the ground underneath the project, and had given BXP until July to decide whether it wanted to proceed w/ construction. It’s unclear if the BofA discussions industry insiders shared w/ The Promote are the ones BXP is alluding to in its announcement, or if the LOI in Q is with another financial institution. Still, if BofA does make a deal happen, we’re looking at a tasty mega-bank corridor, what w/ JPMorgan’s mega-campus taking shape nearby. JPM, as The Promote reported earlier this month, is also making a run at the Roosevelt Hotel. 🇵🇰

“Every real estate guy has way less cash than you think,” The Promote Podcast co-host Will Krasne is fond of saying. We now have an incredible illustration of that maxim c/o of court records filed by the estate of late CRE titan Jacob Chetrit. Jacob, one of the Brothers Chetrit (Joseph, Meyer, Juda complete the Fab Four), died in Jan., and a June surrogate’s court document (h/t PincusCo) puts some hard numbers on what he left behind: just $500K in a Webster Bank acct., an UES retail condo worth $25M, and, the kicker, “various interests in real estate partnerships totaling approximately $800,000,000.00” 🤲

The document, known as an “Application for Preliminary Letters Testamentary” was included as an exhibit in a new lawsuit filed by Richard Mack’s credit arm (MRECS), in which the lender demands $220M from Meyer Chetrit over 5 separate PG actions. MRECS alleges that a June $21.7M confession of judgment that Meyer signed “bears all the hallmarks of fraud,” because:

• It was signed just weeks after a favorable court hearing for the lenders
• Both the probate petition and the confession of judgment were filed on the exact same date, a move the lender characterize as "truly remarkable" given that Jacob had died nearly 6 months earlier 🤷‍♀
• It reeks of family self-dealing and isn’t backed by appropriate documentation
• It’s designed to place Meyer’s assets beyond reach by creating a priority claim for the family estate 🛡

The Mack action rhymes w/ a similar lawsuit filed by distressed debt investor Maverick (see our conversation w/ Maverick principal David Aviram here) over the Meyer confession; Maverick had also argued (successfully for now) that the confession was a smokescreen to help Meyer avoid paying up.

After this week’s mass shooting at Rudin Management’s 345 Park, which saw a lone gunman storm into the building and kill 4 people before shooting himself, industry leaders are saying little could have been done to prevent the tragedy.

“This incident has absolutely nothing to do with the quality or security of their building, and has everything to do with the failure of our national gun laws,” Kathy Wylde, a key NYC power broker and head of the Partnership for New York City, told Bloomberg, adding that her own office was in a Rudin property. RXR’s Scott Rechler said that the shooting “was carried out by one disturbed individual and does not reflect New York City as a whole.”

Among those killed were top Blackstone exec Wesley LePatner, CEO of BREIT, and Rudin’s own Julia Hyman. Blackstone has in excess of 1M sf at the tower, which also houses the NFL. Investigators believe that the gunman was looking to target the NFL’s offices, but took the wrong elevator bank, and instead found himself at the entrance to the Rudin office on the 33rd floor. There, per Bloomberg, he fired through the glass and stepped into the hallway.

The phrase “real estate tycoon” should be used sparingly, but it sure as hell does apply here. Tom Cousins, who died Tuesday at the age of 93, built much of Atlanta’s skyline and set the stage for future megaprojects, becoming one of the most important men in a city full of important men. His purchase of the Hawks brought the NBA to the Deep South. Ted Turner came to him for early financing for his TV empire. His Purpose Built Communities, founded w/ Warren Buffett & Tiger Management’s Julian Robertson, became a nationwide model for community development in tough neighborhoods. And he played kingmaker in city and state politics.

“In 94 years, I’ve met a lot of admirable people and not so admirable people,” Buffett told the AJC. “And I would put Tom Cousins at the top of any list of people I admire.”

Cousins started his resi development business in ‘58, along w/ his father I.W. They took Cousins Properties public in ‘62, and within a couple years it was named the largest homebuilder in Georgia. By then, though, Cousins had also started making branching out, assembling properties in the Gulch that eventually gave rise to the Georgia World Congress Center and the Omni arena. (CIM, w/ backing from brother Tony Ressler, is now planning a $5B redevelopment of the area known as Centennial Yards.)

Today, Cousins Properties is a major Sunbelt-focused office REIT, controlling 21M+ sf, and has been on quite the office-buying spree. But Cousins’ career was far more exciting than the world of IRRs and earnings calls that the firm that bears his name is steeped in today. He was a proper developer, w/ a list of projects that reads like an Atlanta highlight reel: Omni International Hotel (later CNN Center), 191 Peachtree, Bank of America Plaza. And, in what is almost a prerequisite for a great man, Cousins had an arch-nemesis in Atlanta developer John C. Portman Jr., w/ the men jockeying for skyline supremacy over decades.

My favorite detail: Like Tom Wolfe’s Charlie Croker in “A Man in Full,” Cousins was a big-time quail hunter, who owned an 8,800-acre plantation he eventually sold to Turner. What a guy. 🦆