BY SAM CHANDAN

However long in coming, the Lower Manhattan that is emerging in the distant wake of that terrible day, September 11, 2001, speaks to our capacity for hard-fought renewal. Next to the rising icons of stubborn resolve, Downtown shines with new streetscapes, new hubs of transportation and a burgeoning residential population that is slowly lifting its environs from its erstwhile commitment to Brutalism.

Even with a tower at its heart, the Sidewalk Ballet is re-entering the downtown ethos, albeit under conditions that are more structured and punctilious than organic and spontaneous.

Lower Manhattan is decidedly a market in transition. The “purposeless giantism and technological exhibitionism” that Lewis Mumford called to account for “eviscerating the living tissue of every great city” is increasingly less apropos as a characterization of Downtown’s neighborhoods. The demographic shift facilitated by Liberty Bonds’s repurposing of under-tenanted office properties receives due credit. By all accounts, the last decade’s introduction of new residential space will support a markedly more livable community as office, retail and hotel inventory comes online.

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BY ADELAIDE POLSINELLI

You’ve been working tirelessly, all summer long, on a really exciting, quiet, below-the-radar real estate deal. After hours of careful planning to ensure success and predict any possible roadblocks, you create the perfect package to showcase the property’s unique attributes as well as address all of the owner’s possible concerns.

Several meetings later, the owner finally hires you to represent her exclusively in the marketing of her asset. You know you can get this deal done, but the seller gave you a short window. You have 30 days to get an acceptable offer into contract. Having spent the time exploring the best possible outcome, you are confident that you can deliver what you promised.

You diligently select the top investors who have the ability and wherewithal to close this transaction quickly and without any drama. You call them and walk them through the deal, detail by detail, step by step, dollar by dollar.

Finally, one of the investors jumps off the carousel and grabs the golden ring, striking with an offer that hits the seller’s target. The deal terms are confirmed and the paperwork rushed off to the appropriate attorneys.

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BY CARL GAINES

The New York City Department of Sanitation has initiated what amounts to a land-swap with the City University of New York and the Memorial-Sloan Kettering Cancer Center that will allow for the development of a new outpatient cancer center and a consolidated location for CUNY Hunter College’s health and basic sciences campuses.

Mark Weiss (pictured), Justin DiMare and Howard Kesseler from Newmark Grubb Knight Frank represented MSKCC in its $215 million purchase of the 66,000-square-foot parcel of land at 525 East 73rd Street that will be the site for the development. The spot was previously the home of a New York City Department of Sanitation garage facility, which was demolished in 2008 to allow for the construction of a new facility. That project never got off the ground and in 2011 the New York City Economic Development Corporation issued a Request for Proposals for its sale and development.

Part of the RFP was for the construction of a new garage site. It looks like this will now happen downtown at the CUNY Brookdale campus on First Avenue and 25th Street, which will be vacated by the school with ownership reverting back to the City at a price tag of $180 million. In addition to potentially serving the Department of Sanitation’s needs for a replacement garage facility, the City will initiate a public planning process there that could lead to public and residential space there.

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ALESSIA PIROLO

New Jersey-based Accordia Realty Ventures, LLC has announced the complete refinancing of the first mortgage loans on two of its office buildings, which it has owned for over five years.

The properties are Greenbrook Executive Center, a 200,000-square-foot class A building located at 100 Passaic Avenue in Fairfield, N.J. and River Drive Center II, an 83,000-square-foot building located at 669 River Drive in Elmwood Park, N.J.

Accordia Realty declined to provide details on the amount of the loans, but it confirmed that Lakeland Bank has fully refinanced a first mortgage loan on Greenbrook Executive Center, which, according to public records, was $21.3 million in September 2006. The property was purchased for $31.9 million.

Accordia Realty principal Joseph Romano told The Mortgage Observer that the company has invested about $5 million in renovations to the building. In 2006, the occupancy rate was approximately 85 percent. In the last few years, despite having lost a large tenant, the company executed seven new lease agreements and boosted occupancy back to approximately 90 percent. Among the most recent tenants to sign a lease is entrepreneur Jason Cohen’s Rickland Orchards, LLC, a newly launched firm of healthy Greek yogurt food products.

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