BY ROBERT SAMMONS

Ahhh—the hustle and bustle of the Grand Central submarket.

It has it all: a spectacular train station with its shops, bars, restaurants and food hall (oh, and actual trains, too), a fantastic location within walking distance of everything from Times Square to Central Park (and you can always take the subway if you’re lazy) and a thriving commercial office market consisting of almost 59 million square feet of inventory (though only 27 percent of that is considered Class A).

But all there isn’t absolutely perfect—something about those wonderful buildings getting a bit long in the tooth, maybe? After all, it’s not really the Mad Men days of yore, and the building stock (average age: 72 years) doesn’t necessarily work for all those companies looking for wide-open floorplates and glass from floor to ceiling. That’s the reason a number of government and private-sector movers and shakers have decided to, well, shake things up by looking to upzone a large swath of the area.

Not only will Grand Central be affected, but its ritzier neighbor to the north, the Plaza submarket, will get an upzone too (43 percent of the Plaza’s inventory is considered Class A).

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BY KARSTEN STRAUSS

The holiday season and the sense of community it can evoke is sometimes enough to pry even the most voracious macher’s focus away from the all-consuming adventure of buying, selling and leasing square footage for retail and office use. This year, firms executed their seasonal giving in various ways. Here are a few…

Related Companies announced a $500,000 donation to the Mayor’s Fund to Advance New York to support hurricane Sandy relief efforts. The firm also has partnered with New York Cares to create donation sites for the 2012 New York Cares Coat Drive in prominent retail locations in New York City and New Jersey. Donations will be accepted at Manhattan’s Time Warner Center, the Bronx Terminal Market, the College Point Retail Center in Queens, the Gateway Shopping Center in Brooklyn and the Clifton Commons Mall in Clifton, New Jersey. Donations will be accepted at all locations through December 31, 2012.

Paramount Group continued their holiday coat and food drives, which the firm spearheads in all eight of its New York buildings, its five Washington DC buildings and 1 Market Plaza in San Francisco. “You’ve got a lot of good people in New York that want to help and we try to provide that opportunity,” said Ralph Diruggiero, vice president of management for Paramount. Organized by building managers, the efforts have collected some 625 coats this year.

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BY KARSTEN STRAUSS

BSJ SoHo let go of 72-76 Greene Street last week for a reported sum of $41.5 million. The buyer – a partnership of Chicago-based L3 Capital and Washington DC’s ASB Capital Management – paid $1,186 per square foot for the building known as “The King of Greene Street” because of its French renaissance-Second Empire architectural styling. It contains two retail spaces, three commercial units and three residential rent-stabilized lofts.

ASB is the majority partner in the deal and the plan now is to make use of the building’s 38,000square feet of mixed retail, office and residential space, said ASB CEO, Robert Bellinger.

The company – which has a nationwide retail portfolio valued at just under $3 billion – has made investments in Manhattan before, including the purchase of 625 Broadway and 400 Madison this year.

The company has also been surveying the popular Midtown South market, Mr. Bellinger said. “We think that the market in Manhattan submarkets are some of the best opportunities for rent growth, particularly in office and retail,” he said.

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BY KARSTEN STRAUSS

Canada-based commercial real estate firm, Avison Young, announced the hire of Walter Blyzniuk. Mr. Blyzniuk, formerly a senior director with CBRE, was brought on to establish a Tri-State market advisory and transaction services platform focused on the commercial real estate needs of pharmaceutical companies, according to Avison. He will be based in both the company’s New York City and Morristown, N.J. offices.

Specifically, Mr. Blyzniuk will be advising and representing pharmaceutical companies in the acquisition and disposition of productive/specialized assets including manufacturing sites and bio, chemistry and physics labs. “Since launching our operations in the Tri-State area, Avison Young has made a concerted effort to recruit best-in-class specialists such as Walter to provide expert-level services to our growing client base,” said Greg Kraut, principal and managing director with Avison. “Due to consolidation in the industry, today’s pharmaceutical companies require the expertise of specialized professionals who truly understand their business,” Mr. Blyzniuk said, as part of a company release.

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