Boston Properties

The owner of an Indian restaurant on West 54th Street called Purnima has filed a lawsuit against Boston Properties (and its contractor, Bovis Lend Lease) in connection with excavation and foundation work for the (currently suspended) LEED Gold-hopeful 250 West 55th Street project. We’ve followed 250 West 55th Street closely here at gbNYC and thought we’d note the lawsuit, which is seeking $600,000.00 in damages for, among other things, interior and exterior building cracking caused by the adjacent construction. The suit was filed a couple of weeks ago; Purnima is now closed and looking for new space somewhere else in Midtown. According to the Observer, DOB issued three stop work orders for the project; two in December and one in late January on the basis of adjacent “building shaking, vibrating, and [compromised] structual stability.” As an interesting footnote, Purnima was given a makeover by Gordon Ramsey on an episode of the Kitchen Nightmare program on FOX back in 2007.

• Construction work continues at 4 World Trade Center , the Fumihiko Maki-designed, LEED Gold hopeful 150 Greenwich Street.
• Boston Properties suspends construction work (currently proceeding through foundations) at LEED Gold hopeful 250 West 55th Street after law firm Proskauer Rose backs out of lease.
• Construction also progressing at affordable, LEED Platinum hopeful 575 Fifth Avenue in Park Slope.
• Video tour of microturbine installations at 399 Lafayette Street's Astor Wine & Spirits.
• New York State's seventh LEED Platinum-certified building is Barton Group's corporate headquarters in Glens Falls.
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Back in November, we noted an article in Real Estate Weekly reporting that Proskauer Rose might pull out of its tentative agreement to take nearly 500,000 square feet of space at Boston Properties' LEED Gold hopeful 250 West 55th Street (which is currently in the midst of excavation and foundation work). The snag for Proskauer was a loss of financial incentives from Morgan Stanley to vacate its current space at 1585 Broadway early so that the (at the time) investment bank could take over all of the space in that tower.

Earlier this week, REW reported that Proskauer is now in negotiations with SJP Properties for that same 500,000-square-foot block of space at the star-crossed, LEED Gold hopeful 11 Times Square, which remains without a single tenant even after both its steel skeleton and concrete core topped out late last year. REW suggests that a deal would (finally) likely be at a discount from the $100 per square foot asking rent that SJP had refused to lower throughout 2008. (Note that the deal which law firm Gibson Dunn signed last year with Boston Properties at 250 West 55th Street was rumored to be in the low $100s per square foot.)

At a meeting held earlier today, the Port Authority unveiled renderings from three firms for 20 Times Square, the 1.3 million-square foot, 42-story LEED (for Core and Shell) Gold tower that Vornado Realty Trust and Ruben Cos. plan to co-develop above the north wing of the agency’s Bus Terminal on 8th Avenue.