BY MICHAEL EWING

Featuring an all-star line up of the city’s most formidable real estate professionals, this year’s annual Masters of Real Estate fetched a record 450 RSVPs, The Commercial Observer has learned.

Observer Media Group executives began preparing for the event, now in its third year, six months in advance with an eye toward creating an eclectic mix of speakers. Larry Silverstein of Silverstein Properties, Michael Fascitelli of Vornado, William Rudin of Rudin Management, Jeff Blau of Related Companies and Glenn Rufrano of Cushman & Wakefield are all scheduled to appear. Rob Speyer of Tishman Speyer bowed out.

Jared Kushner, the owner of The Commercial Observer and president of Kushner Companies, will lead the event with remarks.

The event, set to run from 8 a.m. to 2 p.m. today at the Metropolitan Club at One 60th Street, features three panels on the state of capital markets, the state of New York City real estate, and the state of opportunistic investments.

Given its size and the clientele of the speakers, the event is planned far in advanced to ensure that the date is marked on every calendar in the industry.

"We started planning six months ago and had a date set six months in advance. This is because the speakers and attendees have very busy schedules," said Zarah Burstein, director of marketing and events at the Observer Media Group.

"The more time we have to plan the event, the better," Ms. Burstein added.

In the early stages of planning, Ms. Burstein and The New York Observer sought to host the event at The Metropolitan Club, where the all-day event has been held for the past three years. Last year, Douglas Durst of the Durst Organization and Gary Barnett of Extell Development was among the roster of panelists.

"With how the event is growing, hopefully next year will continue to be bigger and bigger," she added. "It is definitely one of the most exciting events that we have with a very good speaking panel. The ticket price is $500, but everyone finds it worthwhile as the attendees have the opportunity to interact with real estate power players in the city."

BY SAM CHANDAN

For most New Yorkers, life is resuming its normal routine following last week’s hurricane. With power largely restored and subways again crossing the East River, the most immediate obstacles to the city’s proper functioning have been removed. In Staten Island and across a huge swath of New Jersey, things have not been so easy.

Rebuilding will continue long after the hurricane has receded from public memory, even longer if partisanship succeeds in debasing FEMA.

For all its human costs, the economics of a hurricane are uncomplicated. During the event and in its immediate aftermath, the stock of wealth is reduced and productive activity comes to a standstill. As activity resumes, resources are quickly deployed to return wealth to its initial level. Recovery spending rises in proportion to the destructiveness of the initial event. The local purse is rarely adequate to the task. An external agent socializes the costs.

In duration and magnitude, the stimulus exceeds the relatively briefer interruption of activity. The higher flow is captured in the GDP accounting, but the initial decline in the stock is not, giving rise to the glazier’s fallacy. The economy registers a bounce in the medium term, masking the fact that wealth is reduced. If the outcome of natural disasters were a net increase in wealth, we would engineer them ourselves. We do not, because creative destruction is the exception and not the rule.

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BY ROBERT KNAKAL

In last week’s column, I observed that in New York City’s building sales market, the outer-borough submarkets have been performing better than Manhattan on both a dollar volume basis and a number of properties sold basis. This is an unusual turn of events that we believe is linked to the softness in the office building sector, primarily in Midtown Manhattan.

The outer-borough submarkets have seen significant increases in dollar volume in 2012 over 2011. The most modest increase was seen in the Bronx, where sales volume is on pace for $917 million, a very healthy 21 percent increase over 2011 levels. Queens is on pace for $1.75 billion, which would be a 29 percent increase, while Brooklyn is tracking toward $3 billion, which would represent a 78 percent increase over last year. The best performing submarket is Northern Manhattan, which is on pace for $735 million of sales volume, a whopping 102 percent increase over 2011 totals.

Each of these submarkets is performing extraordinarily well. If we look at the Manhattan submarket, however, we see some interesting trends. The quarterly dollar volume of sales over the last five years hit a peak of $7.3 million in during the second quarter of 2011. By the middle of last year, the market appeared to be gaining significant traction, with a strong third quarter that saw $6.7 billion of activity. Interestingly, the broader economy also appeared to be gaining traction at this point, before slowing tangibly.

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BY JOTHAM SEDERSTROM

If one of the dominant stories in Midtown South this year is the flood of tech and media startups, then the lack of forward movement by large corporate tenants may be the story in Midtown.

Indeed, nary a single lease in excess of 250,000 square feet has closed this year, a conspicuous change from a year ago, when five such deals were inked, including a 1.6-million-square-foot whopper by TV network Viacom at 1515 Broadway.

Despite the dearth of big transactions, however, a wave of smaller ones kept Midtown active. After the jump, Ken McCarthy, senior economist at Cushman & Wakefield, reviews third-quarter leasing activity in Midtown and explains why the market and its 11 submarkets have performed the way they have.

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BY JOTHAM SEDERSTROM

When North American engineering consultancy Hatch Mott MacDonald sought to expand and relocate from its offices at 3 Park Avenue, officials explored buildings throughout Midtown and Midtown South, and initially they had no interest in 1400 Broadway, a 35-story building owned by W&H Properties.

All it took to change the minds of the executives, however, was a tour of the building’s 15,088-square-foot 30th floor, a space that, despite its size, boasts four separate terraces, including one that wraps around West 38th Street all the way to Broadway. Such amenities, not to mention the asset’s proximity to Grand Central Station and Penn Station, helped tip the scales in January, when officials inked a full-floor deal.

After the jump, Fred Posniak, a senior vice president at W&H Properties, reviews the floor plans with The Commercial Observer and discusses what, exactly, drew the consulting company to 1400 Broadway in Midtown.

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