BY THE EDITORS

The Mortgage Observer Weekly launched this morning! Our new, weekly emailed newsletter will deliver the latest commercial real estate finance news directly to your inbox each Friday morning.

The perfect companion to The Mortgage Observer magazine, this newsletter gives readers the latest transaction news, informative charts, Q&As and more delivered directly to your inbox. If you didn’t get it this morning, here’s just a glimpse at what you missed:

Our exclusive on the syndication that’s in the works for the $280 million Capital One Bank and Bank of America financing of 616 units at Riverside Center in New York.

New York Community Bank‘s $223 million refi of a Stellar Management portfolio of properties, also exclusive to The Mortgage Observer Weekly.

For a six-month trial subscription please visit our signup page. And please download our maiden issue here: Mortgage Observer Weekly, 11/09/12.

To sign up for Mortgage Observer Weekly, click here.

BY AL BARBARINO

More than 300 real estate professionals crowded the Metropolitan Club early Thursday morning, despite snow-covered sidewalks, for the Observer Media Group’sthird annual Masters of Real Estate forum. Sponsored by Fried Frank and Marks Paneth& Shron, the event drew boldface names like Larry Silverstein and Mortimer Zuckerman,who spoke about the devastation wrought by Sandy, not to mention financiers like AngeloGordon & Co.’s Adam Schwartz and Rockpoint Group’s Keith Gelb, who weighed in on op- portunistic investments.

Reporter Al Barbarino walked the room and listened in on the panels, striving to put his finger on the commercial real estate in-dustry’s pulse, minute by minute.

To read the minute-by-minute report, click here

BY ROBERT SAMMONS

After easing in both of the previous two months from its 2012 high of 10.4 million square feet in July, overall sublet availability reversed course to close October at just over 9.8 million square feet. Interestingly, this is almost exactly the monthly average, going back nearly 21 years, of just under 9.9 million square feet.

Though there has been talk of Sandy-displaced Downtown firms taking at least some of the “plug-and-play” sublet space available in Midtown, it likely will not make much of a dent in the figure. At this point, many tenants with multiple offices are finding a way to desk-share at another location or work from home.

There is a certain similarity to the early 2000s playing out today, although in not quite as extreme a way. In 2001, Manhattan was entering a recession just when the dot-com bust occurred, and thus by August of that year, total sublet availability had already soared to 12.9 million square feet from its low point (since the early 1990s) of 1.5 million square feet in May 2000. Not long after 9/11 (in November 2002, to be exact) the figure topped 19.7 million square feet. Many tenants who were displaced due to 9/11 relocated at least temporarily to plug-and-play space either in Midtown South or Midtown.

To read the full story, click here.

BY JOTHAM SEDERSTROM

It was a transaction literally a decade in the making. Earlier this year, a deal between Jamestown Properties and Andy Sung, proprietor of the Korean barbecue restaurant Gaonnuri, came to fruition on the top floor of 1250 Broadway.

Once an otherwise abandoned mechanical room under the ownership of SL Green, the 39th floor space in a building near the edge of Manhattan’s Koreatown was widely coveted by not only Mr. Sung, but also other restaurateurs who saw the space as ideal for an eatery with a view. When Jamestown Properties acquired the building in a venture with Murray Hill Properties, Mr. Sung reiterated his case for leasing the room, although as chief operating officer Michael Phillips insists, he didn’t have to work hard to convince anyone.

“We believe that creating the best sense of place and community is what drives tenant retention,” said Mr. Phillips. “There isn’t one size that fits all, and I think being able to make the most of the assets that you have is what makes for good real estate.”

After the jump, Mr. Phillips reviews the floor plans for 1250Broadway’s 39th floor with The Commercial Observer and explained what drew Gaonnuri to the building.

To see the plan, click here