The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf Expands to New York Area, Starting With Store in Fort Greene
The Los Angeles-based specialty beverage brand The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf is expanding to New York, with the first store having opened Aug. 28 in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Fort Greene. Franchisee Hudson River Coffee & Tea plans to open a number of stores across the New York metro area, including a second Brooklyn… Read more »
Optimizing Building Performance During a Crisis Requires Finding the Right Baseline
33 Nassau Ave, Brooklyn. Buildings are big, complicated structures. They have hundreds of pieces of equipment that work together in a symphony of heating and cooling, exhausts and intakes, switches and controllers, all firing up and shutting down in an intertwined daily rhythm. Normally, a building can count on the predictable consistency of its occupants… Read more »
It’s a Broker’s Market
We will talk more about the commercial and industrial marketplace in additional posts over the next weeks. Right now we think this is a terrific marketplace for brokers. So we’d like to welcome the newest member of the KDA broker team, Max Duclos. As Max and our brokers canvas neighborhoods, we’re seeing an influx of… Read more »
City Planning Commission Greenlights Industry City Rezoning
Despite the opposition of the local city councilmember, the City Planning Commission today approved the controversial rezoning of Industry City in Sunset Park, Brooklyn, which is expected to generate several hundred thousand square feet of new commercial space. Commissioner David Burney was the only member of the planning board to vote against the proposal, which… Read more »
Amazon Delivers Hope to Brooklyn Office Market
The coronavirus has slowed an already lagging Brooklyn office market, but Amazon Music has signed a lease in a new Williamsburg building that has local brokers feeling optimistic. Amazon’s music streaming service took 40,000 square feet of production space at Rubenstein Partners and Heritage Equity Partners’ 25 Kent. Commercial Observer
Lessons from Tesla’s Approach to Innovation
As technology and innovation scholars, we’ve studied how innovators commercialize new technologies and we’ve interviewed Elon Musk, his co-founder J.B. Straubel, and other important members of the team. What we’ve found is that beneath the turbulent surface, Tesla’s innovation strategy — which focuses on transforming the auto industry as a whole — offers enduring lessons… Read more »
Not In My Back Highway: Inside the Fight to Rebuild the BQE in Brooklyn Heights
As the Brookyn-Queens Expressway (BQE) approaches 80 years old, the city has to decide what to do with the triple cantilever. DOT recently determined that, within five years, the cantilever will become structurally unsound and unable to carry the current amount of traffic. The agency is mulling whether it should be repaired in stages, rebuilt… Read more »
The 50 biggest NYC office sales of 2019
2019 turned into a pretty good year for New York City’s investment sales sector. Rising rents stoked investors appetite not only in Manhattan, but in Brooklyn, Queens and the Bronx. And tech giants Amazon, Google and Facebook continue to expand their presence in the city, signaling to investors that the industry is thriving in the… Read more »
Resident and Tenant Retention Strategies for 2020
For managers of commercial and residential buildings, retaining tenants and residents is a perennial item on the to-do list. Whether it’s adding new high-tech features or fine-tuning procedures, the time is right to take a hard look at retention strategies for 2020. Owners and property managers must continuously ask themselves a crucial question: What’s the… Read more »
Real estate seeks changes to city’s green buildings bill
In four years, tens of thousands of buildings in New York City will need to meet strict carbon emission caps. But landlords are hopeful that key changes will be made before then. Local Law 97, enacted in May 2019, is part of a push for a 40 percent reduction in citywide emissions by 2030 and… Read more »
Brooklyn Office 4Q: Rents remain constant as new developments enter the market
In the Brooklyn office market in 4Q 2019, the average asking rent ended the fourth quarter at $52.33/SF, down 0.9% from the prior quarter but still 0.7% higher from this time last year, according to a report on the Brooklyn Office Market (4Q) from Newmark Knight Frank. The availability rate rose 30 basis points to… Read more »
Meet Our Brokers – Fred Rufrano and James Dario Jr.
Fred Rufrano and James Dario Jr. have logged 55 years working at Kalmon Dolgin Affiliates. They bring wide-ranging experience to our clients. We recently interviewed them. KDA: When did you join Kalmon Dolgin Affiliates? James: I started in 1995 …. 25 years; it went by pretty fast. It feels like it passed by in a… Read more »
Hilton’s Motto Will Be Brooklyn’s Tallest Modular Hotel
A slender, 26-story hotel that’s planned for Downtown Brooklyn could claim the crown of Brooklyn’s tallest modular hotel. The Motto by Hilton will replace a single 33-foot wide townhouse at 88 Schermerhorn Street, and rise over 300 feet, making it the borough’s first high-rise modular hotel. The Brooklyn property is slated to be… Read more »
Streaming TV Services Driving Demand for Sound Stages in Queens, Bronx and Brooklyn
Since their opening decades earlier, Kaufman and Silvercup Studios in Long Island City have proven the viability of NYC’s film and tv business. Now, with new streaming video players like Netflix, Showtime, Hulu Amazon and others creating original content, production crews are flocking to the Big Apple drawn by the area’s transportation options, large lot… Read more »
This Brooklyn Pizza Is the 2nd Best In The Country
Nine Brooklyn spots and 22 NYC eateries made this year’s list of the 101 best slices across the U.S., but only one took the runner-up rank. Lucali, a Brooklyn pizza joint on Henry Street in Carroll Gardens, has nearly dethroned Connecticut’s long-reigning pizza champ, jumping ranks to land in second place in The Daily Meal’s… Read more »