“Are you telling me that by Harry going into the Sphere, he now has the power to manifest his dreams, his fantasies?” Beth, Sphere

James Dolan’s Vegas megaproject had all the makings of a disaster: a sports & entertainment scion moonlighting as a developer, a $2.3B price tag that blew past the budget by nearly $1B, and major construction delays. But Sphere is now shaping up to be the biggest success story in all of live entertainment: The arena grossed $379M in tix sales last year, per Pollstar data cited by WSJ, has gone from a net loss of $325M in ‘24 to a $33M profit in ‘25, and the holdco’s stock more than quadrupled from this time last year. A second Sphere is in the works in Abu Dhabi (which lowkey prob has the most stacked sports-entertainment cluster in the world at this point), as well as a smaller version just outside of D.C. Vindicated after years of criticism, Dolan has said the company can manage 5-6 projects at a time, and wants to move on “basically as many as we can.”

What we’re most interested in: How did the development come together? 👇

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It started in ‘16 w/ Dolan doodling a ⭕ w/ a person inside, per WSJ. The Dolan clan was liquid – they had just sold Cablevision to Patrick Drahi for ≈ $18B. Construction kicked off in ‘18 w/ a target $1.2B budget, on a site leased from Vegas emperor Sheldon Adelson’s Las Vegas Sands Corp. Then came Covid which walloped the Strip. Sphere dumped its GC Aecom, which then hit it w/ a breach-of-contract suit. More drama, more delays, but the Sphere eventually landed its trump card in U2, which agreed to a 40-show residency that kicked off in Sept. ‘23.

Structure is roughly as follows: Promote Insiders: Read on for the full story at the end of this newsletter 🔒 👇

Gary Barnett did a little deal last week. Gary Barnett does not do little deals. Every transaction is part of a grander scheme, another cubit dug in service of the next megadevelopment. And that’s why a relatively piddly $19M sale is getting so much attention: Barnett’s Extell just closed on the purchase of the iconic former home of the Friar’s Club at 57 E 55th St.. The seller was Kairos, the lender that foreclosed on the property after the club stopped making good on its payments, w/ a Bob Knakal-led team at BKREA brokering. Now, normally the answer when it comes to Barnett buying something like this is air rights, which Extell can strip and transfer to whatever development they’ve got cooking nearby. But here, the air rights had long been sold off to Park Ave Tower, now an SL Green joint. So what was the play?

To get some clues, it’s worth taking a 3-minute walk over to the Brook, an ultra-exclusive private club at 111 E 54th St. The club, named for the Tennyson poem (“For men may come and men may go, but I go on for ever,” has counted among its members John Jacob Astor, Henry Kissinger, and Mayor Mike Bloomberg. And the juice for us: It’s located right by the Park Ave. assemblage which Extell is in contract to buy from Corem/GDSNY. When The Promote broke news of that pending trade in Jan., we noted that Extell was also negotiating to buy Parkoff’s adjacent office building at 110 E 55th St. , and “maybe even the 54th St. home of secretive private club the Brook.” Now, our educated hunch is that Barnett will look to move the Brook into the Friar’s digs that he now owns, and add the Brook’s current property to his assemblage, which now also includes air rights from Central Synagogue. The site is super-prime for a trophy office tower, a part of the market that has been absolutely ⚡ of late (See also: Single-Malt Buildings 🥃 ) And getting the Brook in the mix will allow him to go even bigger.

A snippet from our Insiders-only chat w/ Lightstone founder David Lichtenstein last week. Get in the mix and join us live for future unplugged conversations w/ CRE’s biggest players.

👑 Chatter: Our Friday piece on King St.’s “pencils down” in CRE got a lot of attention & inbound. Dealmakers affirmed the nugget about King Streeters suddenly going dark. “Now I’ll take it a little less personally lol,” said one. “Was always near the edge imho,” said another. “Too illiquid to begin with and these guys tend to do outlier deals.” Staffers are also sending the message that CRE is less of a priority. We’ll see how the desk’s mandate shakes out in the coming months.