Hudson Yards
Related, led by billionaire Stephen Ross, has been marketing the $3 billion-plus first phase of the Hudson Yards development. The company a year ago lined up the Oxford Properties, a real estate investment unit of Ontario Municipal Employees Retirement System, or OMERS, to serve as an equity partner in the 26-acre development, Manhattan's largest unbuilt space. Related has declined to say how much the Canadian pension fund is investing.
It's "always been our expectation" that Related and its partners would raise about $2 billion of equity for the entire $12 billion project, said Jay Cross, president of the Related unit overseeing the site. Related and Oxford have said they could start the first phase of as much as 4.5 million square feet as early as next year should tenant commitments and accompanying construction financing be secured.
Additional Partners
They intend to seek additional equity partners for future phases of the 26-acre site.
Related is talking to about a dozen potential large-scale users, said Joanna Rose, a spokeswoman for the developer. Ross said last month at a luncheon that he expected to have about 3.5 million of leasing done by the end of the year.
Brookfield, owner of downtown's World Financial Center, is seeking to start its 5.4 million-square-foot Manhattan West project a block east of the Hudson Yards site. The New York- based company shut down preliminary work on the project in 2008. The company envisions two towers, one of them exceeding 1,200 feet in height.
Tower By 2015
"We could have the first tower up and a tenant in by 2015," Chief Executive Officer Richard Clark said on a conference call last month. "Our hope is as we turn the year, we'll be able to get out there and start to do the work."
Melissa Coley, a Brookfield spokeswoman, declined to comment beyond Clark's public statements.
About 64 percent of Manhattan's office buildings are more than 50 years old, according to CB Richard Ellis Group Inc. That means most are incapable of satisfying the desires of financial, media and technology industries for wide-open, high-ceilinged space with the latest environmentally conscious technology, said Lawrence Longua, director of the REIT Center at New York University's Schack Institute of Real Estate.