Third Avenue retail scene on upswing
Availability as high as 25.9% between 59th and 79th streets at the end of 2020 has gradually dipped to 8.4%, according to Cushman & Wakefield leasing powerhouse Steven Soutendijk. 'That is s very low, and almost all of that available space is around Bloomingdale's, like the Home Depot space,' he said.
Asking rents range from $150 per square foot to $400, Soutendijk said, but the average ask is $246 per square feet.
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Bloomingdale's at 1000 Third Ave.
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Although the mile-long Third Avenue corridor enjoys none of the prestige of Madison Avenue, it's meaningful as a barometer of the economic health of one of Manhattan's most stable middle-class neighborhoods. 'Its consistency and strong demographic base continue to attract high-quality tenants,' said Meridian's James Famularo.
Three years ago we noted that Third Avenue had lost many sportswear shops to 'wellness' tenants and even to walk-in pet clinics.
Most are still there, and more are coming, but there's a renewed trend of leases to businesses that actually sell products.
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The next major arrival, we're told will be Brandy Melville at 1172 Third Ave., between East 68th and 69th streets. The long-dark site was most recently home to CVS and a few pop-ups.
Blinds to Go gobbled up half of the retail space at 1011 Third between East 60th and 61st streets.
Whole Foods Daily Shop took over most of the space that was previously Food Emporium.
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Workshoppe, a four-level fitness club, is coming to 1120 Third Ave.
Steve Cuozzo
A new outpost of popular Italian trattoria Felice is replacing a diner-cafe in Trump Plaza at East 64th Street.
Some high-priced venues across from Bloomingdale's remain dark, such as the never-leased retail corner at the Harry Macklowe-developed 200 E. 59th St. and the former Ikea Studio at 999 Third Ave.
But north of them, 'Small space in the high 60s and 70s gets leased very quickly and it is a very diverse mix of traditional apparel, groceries, restaurants and services,' Soutendijk said.
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Yahoo
a minute ago
- Yahoo
Record-breaking bridges: How Italy and China are pushing engineering limits
The future of transportation took shape on two continents this week as Italy and China announced bridges that would redefine what's possible in modern engineering. Italy greenlit a $15.5 billion project to build what would become the world's longest suspension bridge, infrastructure company WeBuild said on Wednesday. Over the weekend, the Chinese state-run People's Daily reported the near-completion of what will be the world's tallest bridge. The Italian project, connecting Sicily to mainland Italy across the Strait of Messina, would stretch nearly 2.3 miles, with its suspended span reaching nearly 2.1 miles. This would surpass the current record holder, Turkey's Canakkale Bridge, by more than half a mile. "Today, Italy has shown once again how it can come together around a mega project that will be transformative for the whole country," Pietro Salini, chief executive of WeBuild, said in a press release. Meanwhile, in China's southwestern Guizhou Province, the Huajiang Grand Canyon Bridge reached a milestone with the installation of its final steel girder. According to Chinese state television, the bridge will stand at 2,051 feet from deck to river -- roughly twice the height of the Eiffel Tower. Italy's bridge, designed to carry 6,000 cars per hour and 200 trains daily, focuses on connecting a major island to the mainland. China's Huajiang bridge, while completing a crucial expressway link, incorporates ambitious tourist attractions, including what will be the world's highest bungee jump. Both projects face unique challenges, according to the Associated Press. Italy's bridge must contend with seismic risks in the Messina fault region, while China's bridge tackles the extreme engineering demands of spanning one of the world's deepest canyons, the newsgathering service noted. The competition reflects a broader trend in global infrastructure development. While Italy aims to strengthen its connection to Sicily and bolster NATO's capabilities, China has been systematically building the world's highest bridges. China's Guizhou Province alone has more high bridges than all other countries combined, according to The Italian Transport Ministry announced construction on the Messina bridge is expected to begin next year. According to People's Daily China, the Huajiang bridge is now over 98% complete, and is set to open by the end of September in southwest China's Guizhou Province.
Yahoo
2 hours ago
- Yahoo
The nightmare scenario for America's real estate market
A few years ago, Brian Boero and his wife decided to buy a vacation home in Tuscany. They envisioned owning an apartment in a medieval Italian city, the ideal splurge for a couple of empty nesters after the height of the pandemic. It was also "kind of a 'YOLO' thing," says Boero, the CEO of 1000Watt, a real estate consulting firm. Once he started hunting for a place, though, his European dream turned into a total nightmare. Shop Top Mortgage Rates Your Path to Homeownership A quicker path to financial freedom Personalized rates in minutes It didn't take long for Boero to realize he'd been spoiled by the American market. That may sound strange given the country's housing woes, but even Americans who've never bought a house have probably enjoyed the quirks that make our setup the envy of the rest of the world. When you want to get a sense of all the homes for sale in your area, you can easily cruise over to Zillow or the website of one of its competitors. The listings on these sites are pulled from industry databases that police their accuracy to ensure you're not wasting time on old or scammy postings. If you like a place, it's pretty easy for your agent to schedule a tour, scoop the keys out of a lockbox, and show you around. The rest of the buying process may come with tears and headaches, but the matter of actually finding homes is fairly seamless. Not so in Europe. The Zillow equivalents there offer only partial views of the market, turning up inaccurate listings or homes that have already traded hands. In particularly maddening cases, the same house may be listed separately by several agents, each of whom is asking for a different price. Brokers are also known to gatekeep their best listings, hiding them from the view of the average buyer. Even aggregate market data is hard to come by since there's no central clearing house for listings — it can be difficult to know whether you're getting a really good deal or a really bad one. In Italy, Boero says, he ended up having to carry out much of his search on foot, hoofing around town to peek at home listings posted in the windows of various brokerages. His real estate agent spent a lot of time on the phone, calling around to see what was available. For Boero, the whole thing felt like "feeling around in the dark." "It was shadowy, confusing," Boero tells me. "We really didn't feel like we were in control of the process." Boero is among those warning that the US market could be headed down a similar path. Some of the country's biggest real estate companies are engaged in a fierce war over the rise of "hidden listings" — homes advertised in some places but purposely kept off other sites. Zillow has gone so far as to ban listings that it says weren't shared with everyone, including Zillow, in a timely manner. Compass, the nation's largest real estate brokerage by sales volume, has responded by suing Zillow in federal court. The feud could result in a fracturing of the housing market, with home listings scattered across the internet or hidden away in so-called "private listing networks." Such a future would have real consequences for American homebuyers, who are used to getting a near-complete view of the market simply by navigating to one of the many home search websites available. There's also a bitter irony at the heart of this fight. Groups of real estate brokers in countries around the world are trying to replicate the US model at the same time that big firms on this side of the pond are squabbling over that very setup. "In France, they're laughing at the situation at this moment, honestly," Ali Attar, a real estate tech executive in Paris, tells me. The system in the US, he says, is more fragile than people realize. "They are taking it for granted in the US," Attar says. "And as soon as they destroy it, bringing it back will be extremely difficult." It took decades for the US to reach this kind of housing market transparency. The crown jewels of our modern real estate model — the things that make everything else possible — are the multiple-listing services, local databases where agents share detailed information on homes for sale. The MLSes then shuttle that info to search portals like Zillow, Redfin, or as well as the websites of thousands of local and national real estate brokerages. The average buyer doesn't get direct access to the MLSes, but with the help of the search portals, they don't really need it. Any home shopper can peruse the market, free of charge, from the comfort of their couch. The MLS model is considered by many to be the gold standard. Brokers in other countries have attempted to form similar databases, but the structure in North America remains unique. The problem isn't a lack of technological know-how — building the machinery isn't hard. The tougher part is getting brokers to agree to this kind of cooperation and enforcing the rules to make sure people don't take advantage of the system. In Europe, sellers are often represented by multiple agents who jockey to be the first to procure a buyer. There's a clear incentive to gatekeep a listing — share it around too much, and another agent might swoop in and broker a deal before you know what hit you. The popular, Zillow-like search portals in places like Spain or France are less unbiased repositories of information and more like advertising platforms. Agents ostensibly pay to display listings, but they're also marketing their own services. If a buyer inquires about a listing that's already sold, no matter — the agent can direct them to the other listings held behind closed doors. This is why listings may remain on these sites long after they've gone off the market. When it comes to drawing in more clients, there's no better lure. The ideal real estate marketplace is full of valuable, visible, and valid listings — what Attar refers to as the "three Vs." Buyers want these listings, they can find them, and the information is correct. House hunters in the US are accustomed to websites with postings that check off all three boxes. But in Europe, Attar says, home listings are typically missing at least one. "If it is valuable and it is valid, it's not visible," Attar tells me. "It's going to be hidden somewhere." Hollin Stafford, a real estate agent with eXp Realty in Portugal, can attest to these frustrations. She spent more than a decade working in the business in the States before moving to a town outside Lisbon in 2016. There she encountered a setup that, in many ways, still feels like "the Wild West," she tells me. Though Stafford has now spent years helping buyers and sellers navigate the Portuguese market through her company, Blue Horizon Properties, she hasn't forgotten the parts of the US system that she once took for granted. "You get so used to having the centralized system where you can see all of the details you need," Stafford says. "You can see what things actually sold for, and do a proper market evaluation, and all these things that you just think are par for the course." In September, real estate leaders from around the world are set to gather in Toronto for the third-annual International MLS Forum, a conference where attendees discuss plans to create the kinds of systems that buyers and sellers in the US already enjoy. Canada is the only other country with anything approaching a similar setup, says Sam DeBord, the CEO of the Real Estate Standards Organization, a nonprofit group focused on developing the technological rules and processes that undergird the MLS databases. Other places, like Egypt and France, have taken steps toward creating comparable databases. But in most cases, those with power — the big brokerages or portals that run things — have little incentive to make a change. "It's this concept of a tragedy of the commons," DeBord tells me. "If every individual goes out and takes as much as they can, all of a sudden the marketplace is ruined." There are some clear signs that the US real estate market could fall into something like the cutthroat, user-unfriendly European model. For one thing, the MLSes are basically a social construct. The National Association of Realtors — one of the most powerful industry groups in the country — effectively sets the rules for participating in these databases, and the local MLSes may levy fines against agents who run afoul of those policies. But there's no law that says it has to work this way, and recent troubles at the NAR have dented the group's influence over other power players. Actual enforcement among local MLSes is also known to be spotty. Some in the industry fear that it could all crumble if all this infighting turns into an actual exodus. Last year, Compass, which has more than 37,000 agents around the country, staked its future on a plan to draw more agents and clients by building up a stockpile of "exclusive inventory": homes that couldn't be found anywhere else. The company began heavily pushing a "three-phased marketing strategy" that encouraged sellers to test their home listings exclusively on the Compass website — first in the company's internal database and then on its public-facing landing page — before sharing them with the MLS and the major search portals. The crux of their pitch was that the MLS and sites like Zillow display information that doesn't help a seller, tracking stuff like price cuts and how long the house has been on the market. The brokerage's marketing plan, on the other hand, lets sellers fine-tune their approach and gather valuable feedback from other agents before making a broader debut. Plenty of industry figures cried foul over this plan — the whole system is predicated on the idea that agents share their listings widely and freely. But the brokerage's play also seemed to be working. Buyers want to get a first glimpse at homes however they can, and sellers may not mind testing the market in a limited capacity if they think it'll net them more in the long run. In February of this year, Compass said that more than half of its sellers were choosing to "premarket" their homes using the three-phased plan. About 94% of Compass's listings last year, including those that went through this kind of premarketing, eventually made it to the MLS, the company says, though it's not clear how long those houses spent in the databases. Even if most of these houses ended up on Zillow and the like, Compass clients still had early access to thousands of listings that couldn't be found on the big search portals. The concern now is that other big brokerages could decide to follow suit, keeping homes on their own websites before sharing them elsewhere. In this state of play, a buyer could still visit a site like Zillow to look at homes for sale, but the portal wouldn't be able to show you all, or maybe even most, of the available listings at any given moment. Instead, you'd have to jump from site to site, scouring the web for homes. The choice of an agent would carry additional weight — you'd have to consider just how much of the market they could unlock via their access to private, internal databases. The closest analogy to this hypothetical may be the fragmented world of video streaming, in which companies like Netflix, Hulu, and HBO Max are racing to build walled gardens of exclusive content. Sure, you can try to get access to all the shows and movies out there, but doing so requires a lot of time and money. And, frankly, it's a huge pain. Mike DelPrete, a real estate tech strategist and scholar-in-residence at the University of Colorado Boulder, has been warning about this threat to the search portals for years. "When it comes to browsing for real estate, consumers want access to all of the available inventory," DelPrete wrote in a blog post four years ago. "If a certain portion of listings are held off-market, available exclusively on another platform, consumer eyeballs will naturally follow." For now, a lot of eyeballs are still on Zillow, which draws more than 220 million unique visitors each month. But that's of little comfort to those who warn that Compass could trigger a domino effect among other large brokerages. The 10 largest brands in real estate accounted for more than half of US home sales volume last year, data from T3 Sixty, a consulting firm for residential real estate brokerages, shows. Even some leaders who have come out against Compass' strategy have warned that they, too, could flex their sizable market share to execute a similar game plan. MLSes need "someone to enforce the rules," DeBord tells me. In this case, that enforcer may turn out to be Zillow. The home search giant has tried to put the kibosh on all of this by banning listings that are not shared with Zillow — and the rest of the MLS — within one business day of being marketed publicly. That means as soon as a "for-sale" sign shows up in the front yard or an agent posts about a house on their website, the clock is ticking for them to send it to the databases that share listings with pretty much every other site in the industry. Those who don't comply will be left to explain to their clients why their house won't appear on the most popular home-search portal in the country. Compass has sued Zillow in federal court, accusing the company of using its monopoly power to quash a competing business model that, Compass claims, gives sellers more control over where and how their homes are marketed. In a formal response last month, Zillow disputed the monopoly characterization and argued that it shouldn't be forced to help Compass freeride on the system by accepting its stale listings only after they haven't sold on the Compass site. The brokerage's three-phased marketing strategy, Zillow's lawyers wrote, "harms consumers, who face balkanized and less liquid markets for homes, and Zillow, whose ability to attract and serve consumers depends on comprehensive, up-to-date listings." It's important to remember that anyone weighing in on this battle has a financial stake in their desired outcome. Compass wants to grow its agent base and market share. Zillow needs fresh home listings to fuel its business, which relies on selling leads to agents who pay to advertise on its platform. American companies aren't the only ones who care about this, either — brokers around the world are watching to see how this shakes out. When I talked to DelPrete back in June, he had just returned from a weekslong work trip to Europe. The fight over inventory back in the States, he says, came up "a surprising amount of times." "I think it's a case of the grass is always greener, right?" DelPrete says. "The US wants what the rest of the world has, and the rest of the world wants what the US has." There's a case to be made that all this hand-wringing will turn out to be hyperbole. The real estate industry in the US is notoriously slow to change, and consumers are used to the current setup. Zillow draws so many visitors that it's hard to imagine real estate agents shunning the platform en masse — it's simply too powerful a marketing machine. The MLS model, at least as it exists in the States, is far from perfect. More than 500 local databases form a complex web of overlapping fiefdoms that agents have to subscribe to individually. The recent class-action lawsuits against the National Association of Realtors and major brokerages cast the MLSes not as models of transparency, but as shadowy databases that helped prop up agent commissions by facilitating a sneaky practice known as "steering." There are other models that could work, too: In Australia, for instance, there's a dominant search portal where most people go to find homes, and many places sell via an auction that offers more transparency than the US system of making blind offers. And while the search portals here offer pretty comprehensive views of the market, they've never had all of the listings. There have always been so-called "pocket listings" that float around beyond the reach of the MLSes, available only to in-the-know agents who can offer their clients a leg up on the competition. But hardly anyone in the industry disagrees with the basic premise that buyers like being able to find homes easily and in one place. People may gripe about Zillow's power in the industry or the questionable accuracy of its ubiquitous Zestimate, but the ability to scroll through all the listings on the site — or those on any of the other search portals — is unique to North America. Few probably appreciate this better than Boero, the real estate exec who set out to buy the Italian getaway of his dreams. He did eventually find a place that checked off his boxes: "We're happy with it," he says. But he made that purchase with far less confidence than he had in any real estate transaction in his life. And even today, he has no idea whether it's worth more or less than it was when he bought it three years ago. The whole experience, he tells me, gave him a new appreciation for the American way of doing things. "Within the industry, we've made these comparisons ad nauseam," Boero tells me. "'Hey guys, let's not destroy this very special thing we have. Because just look at the rest of the world and how messed up it is.'" James Rodriguez is a senior reporter on Business Insider's Discourse team. Read the original article on Business Insider
New York Post
5 hours ago
- New York Post
Italy approves $15.5 billion project to build world's longest suspension bridge from mainland to Sicily
Italy cleared the way Wednesday to build the world's largest suspension bridge linking the Italian mainland with Sicily in a massive 13.5 billion euro ($15.5 billion) infrastructure project that has been long delayed by debates over its scale, earthquake threats, environmental impact and the spectre of mafia interference. The Strait of Messina Bridge will be 'the biggest infrastructure project in the West,' Transport Minister Matteo Salvini told a news conference in Rome, after an interministerial committee with oversight of strategic public investments approved the project. 5 Matteo Salvini holds a press conference about the decision to approve work on the Strait of Messina suspension bridge. AP Advertisement Premier Giorgia Meloni said that the bridge 'will be an engineering symbol of global significance.'' Salvini cited studies showing the project will create 120,000 jobs a year and accelerate growth in economically lagging southern Italy, as billions more in investments are made in roads and other infrastructure projects accompanying the bridge. Preliminary work could begin between late September and early October, once Italy's court of audit signs off, with construction expected to start next year. Despite bureaucratic delays, the bridge is expected to be completed between 2032-2033, Salvini said. Bridge could count toward NATO spending target Advertisement The Strait of Messina Bridge has been approved and canceled multiple times since the Italian government first solicited proposals in 1969. Premier Giorgia Meloni's administration revived the project in 2023, and this marks the furthest stage the ambitious project— first envisioned by the Romans — has ever reached. 5 This digital rendering shows a bridge linking the Italian mainland with Sicily. AP 'From a technical standpoint, it's an absolutely fascinating engineering project,'' Salvini said. The Strait of Messina Bridge would measure nearly 3.7 kilometers (2.2 miles), with the suspended span reaching 3.3 kilometers (more than 2 miles), surpassing Turkey's Canakkale Bridge, currently the longest, by 1,277 meters (4,189 feet). Advertisement With three car lanes in each direction flanked by a double-track railway, the bridge would have the capacity to carry 6,000 cars an hour and 200 trains a day — reducing the time to cross the strait by ferry from up to 100 minutes to 10 minutes by car. Trains will save 2/12 hours in transit time, Salvini said. 5 Italian undersecretary Alessandro Morelli, Italian Vice Premier and Minister of Transport Matteo Salvini and businessman Pietro Ciucci. AP The project could provide a boost to Italy's commitment to raise defense spending to 5% of GDP targeted by NATO, as the government has indicated it would classify the bridge as defense-related, helping it to meet a 1.5% security component. Italy argues that the bridge would form a strategic corridor for rapid troop movements and equipment deployment to NATO's southern flanks, qualifying it as a 'security-enhancing infrastructure.' Salvini confirmed the intention to classify the project as dual use, but said that was up to Italy's defense and economic ministers. Advertisement A group of more than 600 professors and researchers signed a letter earlier this summer opposing the military classification, noting that such a move would require additional assessments to see if it could withstand military use. Opponents also say the designation would potentially make the bridge a target. 5 The project could provide a boost to Italy's commitment to raise defense spending to 5% of GDP targeted by NATO. AP Concerns over organized crime Environmental groups have lodged complaints with the EU, citing concerns that the project will impact migratory birds, noting that environmental studies had not demonstrated that the project is a public imperative and that any environmental damage would be offset. The original government decree reactivating the bridge project included language giving the Interior Ministry control over anti-mafia measures. But Italy's president insisted that the project remain subject to anti-mafia legislation that applies to all large-scale infrastructure projects in Italy out of concerns that the ad-hoc arrangement would weaken controls. Salvini pledged that keeping organized crime out of the project was top priority, saying it would adhere to the same protocols used for the Expo 2015 World's Fair and the upcoming Milan-Cortina 2026 Winter Olympic Games. 'We need to pay attention so that the entire supply chain is impermeable to bad actors,'' he said. 5 Environmental groups have lodged complaints with the EU, citing concerns that the project will impact migratory bird. AP The project has been awarded to a consortium led by Webuild, an Italian infrastructure group that initially won the bid to build the bridge in 2006 before it was later canceled. The Canakkale Bridge, which opened in 2022, was built using an engineering design similar to the one devised for the Messina bridge, including a wing profile and a deck shape that resembles a fighter jet fuselage with openings to allow wind to pass through the structure, according to Webuild. Advertisement Addressing concerns about building the bridge over the Messina fault, which triggered a deadly quake in 1908, Webuild has emphasized that suspension bridges are structurally less vulnerable to seismic forces. It noted that such bridges have been built in seismically active areas, including Japan. Turkey and California. Webuild CEO Pietro Salini said in a statement that the Strait of Messina Bridge 'will be transformative for the whole country.'
