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New York City Jobless Rate 9.6% In July - A 12-yr. High

The city's private-sector employment fell by 93,200 jobs, or 2.9%, to 3.1 million during the past year. That includes 37,400 jobs lost in the financial sector and 28,900 in business services.

» NYC Blog [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]

NYC: The Summer That Isn't

Not one 99-degree day in Central Park. Not a single day that the temperature even approached 90. For just the second time in 140 years of record keeping, the temperature failed to reach 90 in either June or July.

» New York Times [ Contribute: submit link / submit article ]

Housing Market Shows Some Signs Of Recovery

"This is the first time in almost three years that we've seen price increases," says Yale University professor Robert Shiller, who helped design the home price index. "So when we see a break in the downward trend that's definitely encouraging news."

"Well, I think the worst is probably behind us — the worst pace of decline," he says. "We were going down at 2 percent a month for a number of months in a row nationally. That was really something. Now home prices relative to rents or construction costs are back at normal levels."

So have we finally hit bottom for the housing market?

"Well, I think it very much depends on what city you're in," says William Wheaton, a housing economist at MIT. "There are really two types of markets right now."

Wheaton says on the one hand, there are markets like Arizona, California and Florida, which have seen huge price corrections — down 30-50 percent — driven by a flood of foreclosure sales. Then there are other parts of the U.S. that haven't seen such big price drops.

In some places where prices have corrected sharply, a lot of people are able to get very good deals on houses.

"If you're in a market like California, where prices have fallen 50 percent and transactions have picked up and you ask your friendly professor 'Is this the bottom?' I would say pretty much so," Wheaton says." If you could buy a house [for] 50 percent of what you could a few years ago, I'd say go ahead and buy it."

Wheaton says there are many other markets where prices haven't fallen that much, and he thinks some could still drift lower. The local employment picture is also a significant factor.

[ PDF ] Standard & Poor's Case-Shiller Home Price Index, July 28, 2009

Podcast: Should you invest in coastal property?

Can auctioning your cash to the highest bidder earn you a better deal? Is it worth paying more for a coastal property? Plus - could you get a better mortgage deal from China?

[ MP3 ] Should you invest in coastal property?

Manhattan Condos Tighten the Rules

Historically, condos have cost more, partly because they had looser rules, and partly because of their scarcity. Although both are changing, the price differential between condos and co-ops has remained roughly the same. Nor has the shift toward co-op-style behavior so far seemed to affect condo prices. The average sales price for Manhattan condos in the first quarter of this year was $1.45 million, 28% more than the average sales price for co-ops, which was $1.13m, according to sales data from Prudential Douglas Elliman.

» nytimes.com [ Contribute: submit link / submit article / submit company ]

Secure Super Grid: Attack-Proof Power Line Under NYC

American Superconductor Corporation and Con Edison, announced joint effort to develop and deploy a new system level solution that utilizes high temperature superconductor (HTS) power cable technology in Con Edison's grid in New York City. Code named Project HYDRA, this new technology is capable of carrying very large amounts of power while also being able to automatically suppress power surges. The Department of Homeland Security will invest in the development and demonstration of this technology to enable "Secure Super Grids" in the United States.

» amsuper.com [ Contribute: submit link / submit article / submit company ]

Jean Nouvel's Residential Tower, New York

Jean Nouvel’s “Vision Machine” a 23-storey residential tower located in the Chelsea neighborhood of Manhattan along the Hudson River has begun construction. The stunning building which features a Mondrian-like curtain wall comprised of nearly 1,700 different size panes of glass that change character according to lighting conditions, is, according to its architect, a direct conceptual and material descendent of his Arab World Institute in Paris, which is celebrating its 20th anniversary this year. The building, which stands next to the recently completed, Gehry-designed Interactive Corporation headquarters, will contain 72 residences that will range in size from 890 square feet to 4,675 square feet. The buildings top floor will be a single grand residence with a full rooftop terrace. Each unit will have a sparely designed top of line kitchen and baths. At the base of the building is a dramatic lobby space with 20-foot high ceilings. It will a concierge, a ground floor restaurant and dining patio, a residents’ mail room, package and refrigerated storage room, access to a garden and a private elevator landing serving the residences above and the pool, gym and spa areas below. At 70 feet long, the building’s mirror-canopied pool will be one of the largest in Manhattan. Prices for the units will range from US $1.6 million to $22 million. The building will be LEED certified. Beyer Blinder Belle is serving as executive architect for the project.

» jeannouvel.com [ Contribute: submit link / submit article / submit company ]

The Real Estate Industry, though Volatile, Offers Riches to Those Who Know Where to Look

While many Americans are worried that real estate prices have flattened and may even turn downward, some of the country's top commercial developers say there always is opportunity for those who manage their projects efficiently in a global market, focus on areas with growing demand and have the staying power to wait out the downturns.

After record growth in 2006, how does the commercial market look today? "Let's just hang on and hope these times continue," said William L. Mack, referring to the current era of low-interest rates, rising rents and soaring real estate investment. Mack is managing partner of Apollo Real Estate Advisors, a New York-based real estate firm with office, retail, hotel and other projects in 20 countries.

[ mp3 ] listen or download / » wharton.upenn.edu

Record price for lower Manhattan office building

Record price for lower Manhattan office building. Deutsche Bank agreed to sell its North American headquarters at 60 Wall St. in New York to German billionaire mail-order retailer Michael Otto, for $1.18 billion. The 1.6 million-sf tower sold for $732/foot, a record for lower Manhattan, according to Real Capital Analytics. The bank will remain in the building for the next 15 years under a lease agreement reached with the owners. Lower Manhattan office rents are surging as the area recovers from the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Rents averaged a record $52.86/sf in Q1, up 43% in a year, while the vacancy rate fell 36% to 7.6%, according to Grubb & Ellis.

Smart Buildings Could Save Energy By Spying On Workers

"Imagine peeling the roof off the building and watching people go about their lives, like in an ant farm," he says. "You can't identify individual ants or keep track of them as they scurry past each other, but you can watch as they move food into the nest or dig chambers."

Researchers at Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratory (MERL) have devised a 'dumb' surveillance system that monitors the movements of workers without identifying them individually. The idea is to have a computer system automatically configure the air-conditioning to save money, or illuminate the most appropriate escape signs in an emergency.

» New Scientist

New York Times Building, New York, United States

Heralded as the most significant new building to be designed for the NYC skyline in decades, the New York Times Building designed by Renzo Piano and FXFOWLE will be the first high rise curtain wall with ceramic sunscreen to be built in the US. Ultra clear low iron glass will be draped in ceramic tubes to create a curtain wall that reflects light and changes color throughout the day. At the base, floor to ceiling glass will provide a view into the building to reveal a lobby designed by Renzo Piano Building Workshop. The integration of exterior and interior architecture and nature and the built environment comes to its apex at the fully visible ground floor garden. Open to the sky, this garden of moss and birch trees will create a garden like none other. Adjacent to the garden, a 378-seat auditorium provide a significant amenity to the tenants of the building 856 feet in the sky. At its peak, the buildings curtain wall of ceramic will extend beyond the rood to finish the building in a lacelike crown of white.

» fxfowle.com [ Contribute: submit link / submit article / submit company ]

Urban Glass House, Soho, New York / Philip Johnson and Alan Ritchie

Is a modernist residence the latest luxury accessory of the rich and famous? Judging from the brisk sales of units at The Urban Glass House, a new, luxury condominium project located in Soho New York designed by Philip Johnson and Alan Ritchie, one would think so. The 11 storey 40-unit project, which is ready for occupancy in 2007, is 80% presold. And the penthouse unit set a record for the neighbourhood. No small feat given that real estate market has cooled and that the units here are pricey, ranging from 1.6 to 12.5 million dollars.

Part of the project’s success is that it has been cleverly marketed as the urban version of an iconic building, Johnson’s Glass House in New Caanan, Connecticut, which the architect completed in 1949 and occupied until his death in 2005. Ritchie says in scale and context, the Urban Glass House echoes the Seagram building. But the details are drawn from the Glass House. The building’s palette is limited and restrained, with steel and glass as primary materials. Inside, Annabelle Seldorf has designed rich, warm yet spare interiors. White oak floors are laid in a chevron pattern like the brick floors in the original Glass House, and large expanses of glass are used throughout.

» pjar.com [ Contribute: submit link / submit article / submit company ]

Hearst Tower, New York

Foster's Hearst Tower opened officially on 9 October with a gala celebration. The 46-storey glass-and-steel world headquarters tower rising 597 feet from within its landmark six-story base on Eighth Avenue now houses 2,000 New York City-based Hearst employees. The tower rises dramatically above Joseph Urban’s existing six-storey Art Deco building. Designed to consume significantly less energy, Hearst Tower is utilising outside air ventilation for up to 75% of the year and is a model of sustainable office design. The tower has a triangulated form with its corners peeled back, the effect emphasises the building's vertical proportions and creates a distinctive facetted silhouette on the skyline that reveals unique views across the Manhattan grid. Establishing a creative dialogue between old and new, the tower is linked to the existing building by a transparent skirt of glass which floods the spaces below with natural light, giving the impression of a glass tower floating weightlessly above.

» fosterandpartners.com [ Contribute: submit link / submit article / submit company ]

Jacob K Javits Convention Center Expansion, New York

The exhibition and meeting room space will increase from around 790,000 sq ft to around 1.1 million sq ft. The expansion will also create a hotel with between 1,000 to 1,500 rooms, and the largest ballroom in New York. The redevelopment will revitalise the existing Javits Center and transform the building's public front and image to make it a world-class convention centre. There will be 3.2 acres of new publicly accessible open space achored by a large public plaza. The plaza, at approximately 40,000 square feet, will contain trees, pedestrian amenities and retail kiosks. Phase I of the Javits expansion and renovation is expected to be completed in 2010.

» rrp.co.uk [ Contribute: submit link / submit article / submit company ]

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