More bad news for landlords. Brooklyn landlord Mahuddin Mahumd was reportedly killed and left nearly decapitated during an apparent argument with a tenant early this morning.

The 57-year-old owner of a Kensington apartment building on McDonald Avenue near Avenue C was found dead, his throat slashed and burns to his face, inside a basement apartment he used as an office when cops responded to a report of an assault, police told the Daily News Tuesday.

It’s the second grisly killing of a Brooklyn landlord in less than a week, the first being the now highly publicized slaying of Menachem Stark, which drew public outrage beyond the killing itself, particularly after the New York Post published a controversial cover story under the headline, “Who didn’t want him dead,” drawing backlash from politicians and community members.

Investigators are searching for a tenant who lived in the apartment next to Mr. Mahumd’s office, who apparently disappeared after the slaying.

In the case of Mr. Stark, the News reports that police may be looking at Israel Perlmutter, a business partner of Mr. Stark’s, as a potential suspect. Police are convinced Mr. Perlmutter has been lying to them while trying to use a Russian businessman as a scapegoat, according to the paper.

The pair had reportedly embarked on a number of soured real estate dealings, including a 74-unit apartment building in South Williamsburg, which fell into bankruptcy in 2009, leading them to default on tens of millions of dollars in loans; and they took a $4 million hit on another Williamsburg property in 2010.

No arrests have been made in either case. 

NYU’s expansion plan suffered a setback on Tuesday when Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Donna Mills ruled that some aspects of the plan—which would add 2 million square feet to the university’s Greenwich Village campus—involve the alienation of public parkland and therefore require approval from the state legislature. The question is just how much of a setback the ruling will prove. Read More

Two financial services firms have signed 12,750-square-foot full-floor deals at 1140 Avenue of the Americas, The Commercial Observer has learned.

Trilogy Global Advisors will relocate from the Grace Building to the 18th floor of the Equity Office property. The tenant will pay rent starting at approximately $80 per square foot in a 10-year deal, according to data from CompStak.

1140 Avenue of the Americas

“The landlord offered a high-end build out,” said Kirill Azovtsev of Jones Lang LaSalle, who represented Trilogy. “The landlord was very receptive to what we asked for."

Trilogy expects to move in to the new space within the next 12 months. The firm concentrated its search along the Avenue of the Americas corridor, wishing to remain central to both Grand Central Terminal and Penn Station.

Elsewhere, on the sixth floor of the building, Field Street Capital signed a five-year lease and will pay similar rents, according to CompStak data. The asset management firm will relocate from 444 Madison Avenue.

John Isaacs of CBRE represented Field Street Capital but did not immediately return requests seeking comment.

Starwood Property Trust, CityMD and Dabroes Management all signed deals at 1140 Avenue of the Americas last year. Starwood, a commercial mortgage real estate investment trust, committed to take the entire fifth floor of the building.

Douglas Neye and David Wassel of Jones Lang LaSalle and in-house broker Jessica Kanfer represent Blackstone Group-owned Equity Office at 1140 Avenue of the Americas. Mr. Neye did not return requests seeking comment.

The Doha, Qatar-based apparel retailer Qela has signed a 6,230-square-foot lease at 680 Madison Avenue, the first deal in the retail property since Thor Equities purchased it for $277 million one year ago.

The shop will occupy 3,000 square feet at ground level and 3,230 on the second floor when it opens in the fall of 2014. Qela will pay upwards of $2,000 per square foot for the prime ground-floor space--among the highest rental rates in the city.

580 Madison Avenue

"Madison Avenue has a deep and rich history of attracting world-class luxury brands, and Qela's move to 680 Madison will allow a retailer new to both New York and America to enter the market at the crossroads of fashion and luxury," Joseph Sitt, the chief executive of Thor , said in a prepared statement.

Richard Hodos of CBRE represented the tenant in the transaction. "They're creating this luxury brand from the ground up and to do it they need really good real estate," Mr. Hodos said. "This space fit the bill—it's one of the top corners on the best block for luxury retail in the city."

Massey Knakal has arranged the $47 million sale of the former St. John’s Hospital building at 90-02 Queens Boulevard and a parking garage at 87-28 58th Avenue in Elmhurst, Queens. 

The buildings are located right next to the most active retail corridor in Queens and across the street from Queens Place Mall and Queens Center. 

“For the first time, Queens is beginning to see a trickle-down effect of rising rents from primary neighborhoods, like Long Island City," said Stephen Palmese, who exclusively handled this transaction with Thomas Donovan, in a statement.

"This is similar to Williamsburg’s effect on Bushwick. As a result, secondary markets, like Elmhurst, which also have great transportation, are experiencing strong increases in residential rents."  

Located between 57th Avenue and Woodhaven Boulevard, 90-02 Queens Boulevard is a seven-story -- plus penthouse -- former hospital building with 266,322 square feet. It has been gutted its steel and concrete foundation and all windows in the building have been replaced, with BSA plans approved to convert the property to a mixed-use building with retail on the ground floor and lower level, medical facilities on the second floor, and residential on the remaining floors.

Located on the corner of Hoffman Drive and 58th Avenue, behind the former hospital, 87-28 58th Avenue is a 86,400-square-foot five-story parking garage with a 290-vehicle capacity. 

They are in proximity to the Long Island Expressway, Grand Central Parkway, Van Wyck Expressway, and Brooklyn Queens Expressway. The buildings are accessible by mass transit as well, with numerous bus lines servicing the area and access to the M and R subway lines at Woodhaven Boulevard.

Mortgage Observer met with Mr. Sotoloff, who BREDS Managing Director and Chief Investment Officer Michael Nash calls ‘employee No. 1.’ He spoke about his experience on both the financing and development/acquisition sides of commercial real estate and the opportunity to help establish Blackstone’s debt business in the fall of 2007.

Mortgage Observer: How did you get started in commercial real estate financing?

Peter Sotoloff

Peter Sotoloff: I’m originally from Chicago, and I grew up in a real estate family. My father was a developer in the city, and I grew up watching him build a lot of buildings there. I always found enjoyment in that, and when I went to Wharton for finance, real estate and management, what I found was that, through the capital markets, which is what I focus on, I’d be able to combine part real estate with my love of finance. That gave me a great perspective, which carried me forward. I began my career at Goldman Sachs in the real estate private equity division and was able to combine both of those skill sets in that role. I did a bunch of internships in college, in media and other areas and kept coming back to real estate. It’s a social business with a lot of interesting people, and every project is unique.

After leaving Goldman, you worked for Morgan Stanley and the development firm Tribeca Associates. How did your career evolve during that time?

I was at Morgan Stanley for two years and then got hired away to be a partner at Tribeca Associates. We did a lot of deals with institutional capital, and in that role as an equity partner, I got a lot of hands-on experience working on deals primarily in the tristate area—both developments and acquisitions. I was able to round out my debt finance experience that way. Working at Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley and Tribeca Associates really developed me as an investor and a manager of institutional capital.

What led to you joining Blackstone in October 2007?

My colleague Mike Nash, who’s our chief investment officer, had left Merrill Lynch to join Blackstone, and the timing was right. He and I had been talking about doing something together for a number of years. I helped to establish Blackstone’s debt business. Blackstone had been thinking about establishing a real estate lending platform for a number of years to capitalize on the knowledge, track record and relationships developed over a 20-plus history in the business, and it was an opportunity I couldn’t refuse. Since then, Jon Gray, our global head of real estate, and Mike Nash have been great mentors as my career has developed.

What are the two or three biggest transactions you worked on in the past year that you can speak about?

Between our mortgage REIT, BXMT, and our private funds, our team put out over $4 billion in originations this year, so it has been a record year here again. One of the more notable deals was 425 Park Avenue, which was a $152 million predevelopment bridge loan we made to a joint venture of GreenOak and L&L on a long-term ground lease. They’re going to redevelop that into a world-class, Class A building. Another was a $273 million condominium conversion loan we originated for 22 River Terrace in Battery Park City in New York.

As the economy continues to improve, how has Blackstone shifted its strategy where commercial real estate lending is concerned?

We have a very flexible mandate in our BREDS business—we can invest in securities, which is how we started, buying CMBS at deep discounts when there were no loans to be made. That proved to be an excellent strategy that set us going and led to legacy loan purchases. Now, the market is healing, and there are a tremendous number of borrowers who need capital. Senior banks have remained very disciplined in the market in terms of what they’re willing to lend on properties, which provides great opportunity for us to provide value-add mezz, B-note and preferred equity with our business. Many of the people we bought debt from have led to new originations. Right now, Europe’s a very attractive market for us on the legacy loan purchase side and also on the origination side with the retrenchment of the banks. There’s a real focus on growing that franchise.

With commercial real estate continuing to rebound in New York and other major cities, do you have any concerns?

You want to obviously pay attention to frothiness, overheating and discipline in your structure. We’ve had no losses, we’ve had very good success, and that’s by choosing very high-quality borrowers, working with guys who are focused on long-term relationships, doing larger transactions in institutional markets and structuring appropriately. There are many deals that we look at, and we’re very responsive, but they don’t always all add up to something where we’re comfortable, but we try to accommodate our clients. We’ll generally look at complex, transitional or value-add transactions and want to do them with folks we believe are among the best in their respective markets and focus.

dghigliotty@observer.com

Susan Fine (Photograph by Michael Nagle)

Developer and project manager Susan Fine has left her signature mark on some of New York City’s most high-profile landmarks, from the development and redevelopment of mixed-use space at the World Financial Center in Battery Park City to Rockefeller Center and the Gateway Center. More than 20 years ago, as director of real estate for the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, she conceived and implemented the entire $250 million redevelopment of Grand Central Terminal, handling the financials and behind-the-scenes negotiations and restoring the historic landmark to its current form. The lessons learned there will serve as a blueprint for her latest project, developing the concourse of the 59th Street-Columbus Circle subway station. The MTA last November selected Ms. Fine and Columbus Development LLC to transform the station into a high-end retail destination. 

Currently under the working name Shop//Stop, the venue will feature 30 retailers ranging from food and beverage to apparel, set across a 27,000-square-foot boulevard-style retail concourse that will feature a market, an array of shops and dining options meant to appeal to New Yorkers of all walks, and a set of central, turnstile kiosks influenced by shopping destinations across the globe. Food, drink, coffee and yogurt will mix with high-end clothing, technology and gift shops. While Ms. Fine isn’t ready to drop names just yet, she told The Commercial Observer on Friday that the final product, slated for 2015, will be anything but typical. 

What’s the goal of this project? 

We believe that we can create an extraordinary urban market that will make the people who ride on trains and transit want to shop and hang out. Drawing from our rents, we will be able to finance improvements that change the way people look at underground retail, here and across the city. 

What’s the layout and look of the space? 

We’re going to put 30 stores in, and we’ll have several areas that change a lot, because retail, by its nature, is theatrical. We can hopefully create a property that we can take other places, because the size and shape of stores has changed. When I was a kid, you went to a department store—that’s not how people shop anymore. 

It’s really like a boulevard, but we have varied the depths of the stores so it’s not monotonous and boring. We are going to have a market. Jim Rouse said when he was trying to get Quincy Market approved in Boston that the one place where everyone can meet is at markets. I really do believe that the essence of Grand Central was something about the heart of New York, and I’m hoping to get that feel and tap into this sort of west side free-think, where there’s going to be a great deal of retail development in the future.

What other types of retailers can people expect? 

We’ll have great coffee and juice and chili and all of that, but the retailers will not be what you would typically see. We want to step it up a notch. We started with a list of literally 500 retailers, and at this point we’re curating. We’re lucky, because we have such a cool design and such a limited resource that the project has been met with a very positive response from the marketplace. 

There are a lot of different demographics we’re catering to, from the very affluent population above ground at Time Warner Center to the kid coming home from school on the subway, and we need to be able to serve all of the different populations. We try to hit a price point that’s both affordable to people but also has a little bit of pizzazz and is creative. 

There will also be the types of things you’d expect to find there, because you’re servicing a customer, and a customer needs a newsstand, and a customer needs a place to buy a USB adapter, and a customer needs a place to buy something if they forget their spouse’s anniversary gift. There will be all of those elements as well. 

Susan Fine (Photograph by Michael Nagle)

And you will also have a series of centralized vending kiosks?

That’s the fun stuff. The kiosks will be in the middle and should change seasonally. They should also change if there’s a great new organic makeup, or if a Web-based company wants to try retail. Those are the types of things that create excitement and give you a reason to come back. But we aren’t focused on that just yet. We’re focused on getting our anchor tenants and getting going. 

But the kiosk system will be designed so that it can be installed in other locations. Our goal really is to create a prototype for transit-oriented retail that can be applied across a host of different transportation centers by using modular elements. There will be something that will be turnstile—for example, a vending machine concept that sells cupcakes like they do in the Seoul subway. The United States has not figured out how to use its underground real estate as well as other countries have, and we’re looking at all of those ideas and having a lot of fun with them right now. 

Which of your past projects will most influence you here? 

Grand Central. What’s really fun for me is I was pregnant with my second child when I was a [Governor Mario] Cuomo appointee, and I was asked to figure out how to get Grand Central done, and now here I am in the second phase of my life, and that kid is going to turn 21. 

But a lot of the lessons I learned at Grand Central, which I learned from very talented people, I’m able to apply here. I understand that having porous storefronts and being able to touch the merchandise makes a great deal of difference. I understand what retail mix the 21 million people who go to this station every year want. 

The success of the Grand Central Terminal redevelopment was based on the combination of best-in-class local and national retailers. We want to make Columbus Circle station an energetic retail destination for subway riders and local residents. 

What are the advantages and disadvantages of taking on a project like this and being responsible for all of the leasing?   

I think that what the MTA and [MTA Director of Real Estate] Jeff Rosen did was very smart. They basically challenged the private sector to invest, which I don’t know that anyone ever did before. I think that my team understands the value of the captive audience in the subway. If we can add the kind of energy that exists in other urban areas across the world, then we will have done a great job. Look at a place like Tokyo or Seoul. You can buy the craziest things in the Tokyo subway. They have vending machines for sushi. People in the public sector are not necessarily looking to do the same things as the private sector. Our team understands what the public requirements are, and that kind of understanding among our team members will go a long way in getting this done. 

In the lead-up to New Year’s Eve last week, The New Yorker reported that the largely vacant 1 Times Square—the home of the ball drop—makes $23 million, or 85 percent of its annual revenue, from advertising signage that bathes Times Square in a neon commercial glow. Signage is a sought-after prize of the New York skyline. Here are a few of the most famous illuminated signs around town. 

(Image via Diego3336/Creative Commons)

New Yorker Hotel, 481 Eighth Avenue: It may not rank among New York grandest hotels, but the New Yorker has earned its spot in city lore by way of the red neon sign that sits atop the 40-story Midtown building—an integral part of the New York skyline. First opened in 1930 before closing in 1972, the hotel reopened in 1994 and over a decade later was the recipient of a thorough makeover that restored the building’s Art Deco details.

(Image via Smith_CL9/Creative Commons)

GE, 30 Rockefeller Plaza: Comcast’s acquisition of NBCUniversal from General Electric early last year called into question the future of the famous neon sign atop the Rockefeller Center property. The deal included naming rights to the building, and while there has yet to be a transition, it may not be long before the GE sign is no more. It wouldn’t be the first time the branding has changed—the building featured a neon RCA sign prior to being changed to GE in the 1980s.

(Image via Jack Zalium/Creative Commons)

Pepsi-Cola, Long Island City: A standout along the banks of the East River since 1936, this Pop art ode to LIC’s industrial past survived the recent addition of high-rise apartment buildings. Developer TF Cornerstone recessed one tower’s first eight floors to make room for the neon red beacon, which for decades was the most prominent Queens structure visible from Manhattan. Legend goes that actress Joan Crawford, a Pepsi board member, had the sign erected directly across from the exclusive River House after its co-op board rejected her. The board’s president at the time had formerly led Coca-Cola.

(Image via Apoorva Jinka/Creative Commons)

Citigroup, 1 Court Square: There are several prominent signs in Long Island City but certainly none that stand taller than the “Citi” sign atop the 50-story Citigroup Building at 1 Court Square, which is the tallest building in New York City outside of Manhattan. While a precise price tag on the sign’s value is hard to come by, the inherent value of the branding opportunity is perhaps no more apparent than in the sale of the building in 2012 to a group of investors for nearly $500 million. 

1 Times Square: When Lehman Brothers purchased 1 Times Square in 2005 for $27.5 million, the bank decided it made more sense to market the tower for its signage opportunities rather than its office space. The entire exterior was modified to add a grid frame for mounting billboard signs, and in 1996 its first electronic billboards were installed. When Lehman sold the tower to the Jamestown Properties in 1997 for $117 million, filings revealed that the billboards had generated $7 million yearly, which by 2012 had grown to more than $23 million.

Joshua Stein

In today’s commercial real estate finance market, borrowers can often choose from a plethora of lenders, offering reasonable loan proceeds at better-than-reasonable pricing. Each lender presents itself as cooperative, accommodating, practical and quick.

Against that backdrop, borrowers face tremendous temptation to play the field—go into the market and find the best possible lender for each deal—save a few basis points here, avoid an escrow nuisance there and get a more favorable prepayment penalty somewhere else.

That strategy can mean that each loan transaction involves a new relationship. Each time, the borrower and its counsel need to get to know a new counterparty and how it does business. No matter how accommodating a lender seems at the outset, it is still a lender, and it will still have its own sensitivities and expectations about how to do business. The first time a borrower does business with that lender, the process will often not go perfectly because of those surprises.

As part of getting to know the new lender, a borrower will also need to get to know that lender’s loan documents. Although most loan documents say mostly the same things, they often say them in different ways, and every lender has its own surprises. So borrower’s counsel needs to carefully review and negotiate a whole new set of documents every time the borrower goes to a different lender. And at the moment of closing, each lender will often have its own specific procedures and requirements that need to be satisfied before the lender actually wires money.

If a borrower consistently jumps from lender to lender, this may have some appeal to it for the reasons suggested above. In my experience, though, borrowers often don’t attach enough value to the benefits of sticking with, say, two or three lenders and going back to those lenders again and again when possible. That seems particularly easy to do if a borrower closes a particular type of transaction, with a similar investment structure and investors, repeatedly.

Once a borrower and its counsel get to know a lender and its counsel, the negotiation and closing process can become much more streamlined and efficient. Instead of needing to fully review and negotiate a new set of loan documents each time, counsel can focus on differences between this deal and the last one or the agreed template documents. This makes it easier to focus on the mechanics of getting to closing, which will go better and faster because the same parties have done it before. Consistency in lender relationships might also save money and achieve quicker closings, exactly what most borrowers want.

If the borrower can reuse basically the same documents that the parties negotiated for the last transaction, that avoids the need to fully rethink everything in the documents—assuming, of course, that for a previous transaction the borrower and its counsel gave the documents a thorough reading. Among other things, that reduces the likelihood of some expensive “gotcha” clause in the documents that counsel might have missed because of the time pressure to close the current transaction.

Consistent use of the same small group of lenders makes the most sense for acquisition transactions, where the borrower must close two transactions simultaneously and might find itself stuck between an unknown and potentially difficult seller and the lender. If the lender is a known quantity not requiring inordinate time and attention, it can speed along the transaction, reduce risk of problems and help iron out whatever problems do arise.

After the closing, if a borrower maintains a small stable of lenders, this makes it easier for the borrower to maintain relationships and have someone to talk to if problems ever arise. If the borrower systematically cares for and feeds those lenders, when the borrower needs something, it will probably be easier than if the borrower first needs to figure out who to call, because the borrower doesn’t really know much about the lender or who has responsibility for this particular loan.

As with any suggestion, there are always plenty of good reasons to reject the suggestions in this column. The borrower’s deals may vary so much that each one will appeal to a different lender. Diversity of lenders may protect the borrower in a financial crisis or market collapse. A borrower may be more willing to play hardball with a lender with whom the borrower doesn’t have a relationship. And it’s always nice to save a little bit of interest by always going to the lowest-cost lender every time.

In weighing the various options, borrowers ought to give more weight than they often do to the benefits of sticking with a small team of horses and riding them again and again. It often works out better that way.  

Joshua Stein is the sole principal of Joshua Stein PLLC. The views expressed here are his own. He can be reached at joshua@joshuastein.com.

Sam Chandan

The United States banking system enters the new year on solid footing. While higher interest rates have weighed on residential mortgage activity, pulling bank revenues lower, other measures of performance show the sector drawing further away from the legacy of the financial crisis. Call reports show that provisions for loan losses dropped to their lowest level in 14 years during the third quarter of 2013. Net charge-offs fell by nearly half from a year earlier, to their lowest level in six years. A gauge of systemic health, the FDIC’s deliberately opaque count of problem banks declined to 515 institutions during the quarter, representing just 1.1 percent of net assets in the banking system.

Improvements in the performance of legacy balance sheets coincide with new lending across a wider range of banks. Across all asset classes, net lending increased by $69.7 billion during the third quarter. Multifamily and commercial real estate and construction loans were all contributors to that sum. Reengagement in property lending is still weighted to relatively larger markets, but the imbalance is less severe than during the early stages of the recovery. Investors in secondary markets and relatively smaller assets have seen a marked improvement in access to credit as banks’ focus has shifted away from legacy distress.

Default rates are down: The default rate on multifamily and commercial mortgages fell to 1.9 percent in the third quarter, its lowest level in almost five years. Default rates have been cut in half for commercial properties, falling from a mid 2010 peak of 4.4 percent down to 2.2 percent. Lifted by strong fundamentals and preferential access to subsidized capital, apartment loans have registered an even more dramatic decline in nonperforming rates. From a peak of 4.7 percent, the multifamily default rate has fallen to below 1 percent for the first time since before the recession. Construction loan default rates have fallen from nearly 17 percent to less than 5 percent as of the third quarter.

Bank lending is on the rise: Lower rates of delinquency and default reflect a shrinking pool of distressed legacy debt. But to an even greater degree, nonperforming rates have dropped because of the dilutive impact of banks’ new lending activities. Net lending on multifamily and commercial properties increased by $17.3 billion in the third quarter, feeding a year-over-year jump of nearly $60 billion. For the first time since the financial crisis, net construction lending increased in the second and third quarters. Construction loan balances were up modestly across multifamily and commercial property projects, by $900 million in the second quarter and $3.6 billion in the third.

Nonbank competition is on the rise: Apart from mammoth residential and commercial projects underway across New York City, banks in smaller markets may be returning to construction lending earlier than intended. Competition for high-quality financing opportunities is rising among both banks and conduit lenders. A more crowded landscape for permanent lending is spilling over into the relatively uncontested construction and development arena. Competition is also exerting a predictable influence on underwriting standards. In the multifamily sector, in particular, the most aggressively underwritten loans coincide with direct competition between banks and subsidized agency lenders.

Credit unions are shoring up the lower bound: Few segments of the market are woefully underserved relative to the their credit quality; the market for very small-cap loans is among the segments where dislocations persist. Helping to alleviate some of the inefficiency, regional and community banks’ small-cap lending is complemented by credit unions. The latter remain a small share of overall commercial property financing but play an outsize role in originating loans below $5 million. Institutional borrowers may dismiss the lower bound of the market as irrelevant, but a more balanced recovery is inevitably more robust. 

There is still hope for distress investors: For short-lived construction loans, the tally of real estate owned has fallen by nearly 50 percent. Banks have been relatively slower in drawing down their multifamily and commercial portfolios. Even where loans have been modified, recidivism persists as a vexing challenge for institutions saddled with weaker borrowers and assets. Across more than $20 billion in troubled debt restructuring, more than a third are once again delinquent or in default. For construction loans, the recidivism rate is nearly 50 percent.

Banks expect more lending: The banking stars are not in perfect alignment, as detractors of the Volcker rule have made certain to restate loudly as the provision has taken shape. While that rule has been finalized and will take effect in 2015, regulatory initiatives addressing capital requirements and long-term bond issuance are incomplete. Those uncertainties present a challenge for the banks but are hardly determinative of current lending trends. Banks’ resistance in adopting more robust processes for measuring and mitigating credit risk are as much a drag on activity as any regulatory moves.

When asked about commercial real estate, lenders are sanguine. In the most recent CRE Lender Sentiment Survey, published each quarter by the Real Estate Lenders Association and Chandan Economics, lenders indicate overwhelmingly that they plan to originate a larger number of loans in 2014. Where it demands caution, lending is poised to grow faster than the count of creditworthy borrowers.   

Sam Chandan, Ph.D., is president and chief economist of Chandan Economics and an adjunct professor at the Wharton School. The views expressed here are his own. He can be reached at dsc@chandan.com.

The Brooklyn tenant who allegedly killed and nearly decapitated his 57-year-old landlord is off the streets after the NYPD nabbed him before he could board a flight to Kuwait.

“Yes, I did it,” Mohammed Siddiquee, 27, reportedly told the Daily News, which first reported the story, apparently confessing to the gruesome slaying. 

Why did he do it? He claims the landlord of his Kensington building, victim Mahuddin Mahumd, “humiliated and teased” him because he didn’t have a lot of money, sending the tenant into a fit of rage.

Police took Mr. Siddiquee into custody at 8:30 a.m. at J.F.K. at 8:30 p.m. last night, as he waited to board the flight, with plans to then board a second plane bound for his native Bangladesh, police told the News.

Mr. Siddiquee is charged with second-degree murder and criminal possession of a weapon and was awaiting arraignment on Wednesday afternoon.

It was the second grisly killing of a Brooklyn landlord in less than a week, the first being the now highly publicized slaying of Menachem Stark, which drew public outrage beyond the killing itself, particularly after the New York Post published a controversial cover story under the headline, “Who didn’t want him dead,” drawing backlash from politicians and community members.

An arrest has not yet been made in that case. 

Fisher Brothers plans to redesign and renovate the 13,000-square-foot public-access arcade at its Park Avenue Plaza property, The Commercial Observer has learned. The $35 million project is expected to commence in early summer and will take approximately one year to complete.

“We are proactive and constantly looking at our properties,” said Ken Fisher, partner. “The arcade is public—it’s not just for the tenants—and we want to show from a civic point of view that we are also being proactive.”

A rendering of the redesigned arcade at Park Avenue Plaza

The new design was created by Janson Goldstein LLP and will include light-infused, double-height space with enhancements aimed at improving pedestrian traffic flow. The plans were presented to the local Community Board last night.

Specific elements of the redesign include 30-foot tall glass columns and a glass façade with flat glass panels with vertical glass crystals. Additionally, the project will add to eight-foot to 10-foot tall green walls of vertical vines flanking a newly added water feature. A art installation near the water feature and two art walls will also be added.

The arcade’s two existing retail kiosks will be combined into one to improve through-block visibility and traffic flow.

Built in 1981, the 1.1 million-square-foot Park Avenue Plaza is owned by Fisher Brothers and Sungate Asset Management. The building’s tenant roster includes BlackRock, McKinsey & Co., Evercore Partners, Intercontinental Exchange and others.

“Park Avenue Plaza is one of our premier properties,” Mr. Fisher added in a prepared statement. “This project represents our strong belief in the future of the Midtown Manhattan market and we are confident our investment will pay dividends. 

The Brooklyn commercial real estate brokerage TerraCRG will exclusively represent the sale of 12-18 Commerce Street, an 11,200-square-foot property in Red Hook.

Five buildings constitute the 107' x 100' lot between Richards and Columbia Streets. The property also includes a 966-square-foot shared courtyard. The asking price is $2.3 million.

12-18 Commerce Street

Current tenants at 12-18 Commerce Street include music studios, offices and self-storage space. Recently, Red Hook has quickly evolved from an isolated (by public transportation) industrial neighborhood into a creative and culinary dynamo. The area also has become home to retail heavyweights like Fairway and Ikea.

"We’re seeing Red Hook transform from an industrial neighborhood into a hub for artists and musicians alike. Est4te Four is helping to accelerate this process by developing over 1.1M square feet of residential condos, retail, and office space on Imlay, Coffey, and Ferris Streets, just a few blocks from the property,” Dan Marks, vice president of investment sales at TerraCRG, said in a prepared statement.

Multi-family office and portfolio management firm TAG Associates is relocating its corporate headquarters to SL Green’s 810 Seventh Avenue after spending nearly three decades at Rockefeller Center.

The firm signed a 10-year, 22,437-square-foot lease for the 7th floor of the 41-story, 694,000-square-foot office tower. 

“Tenants are increasingly focusing on finding existing built spaces and re-adapting them rather than building out new ones from the ground up,” said Studley’s Daniel Horowitz, in a statement, noting perimeter offices and an open landscape design that gives TAG what it wanted – attractive, modern, efficient offices without the extra costs and time commitment of a build out.

Mr. Horowitz represented the tenant with Jeffrey Peck and Joseph Messina, while Larry Swiger and Jeremy Bier of SL Green represented the landlord in-house with Barry Zeller of Cushman & Wakefield.

“The value proposition in this transaction was the in-place infrastructure of the space, complimented by the flexible capital contribution secured from the landlord,” he said.

TAG, which is currently subletting space from Time Warner at 75 Rockefeller Plaza, will reconfigure and upgrade portions of the space, install a partially redundant HVAC system and purchase new furniture.

“The combination of lower occupancy costs and flexibility to accommodate TAG’s operational requirements was critical,” Mr. Peck said. “It was important for the look and feel of the space to reflect TAG’s business objectives, which will include an elegant client-facing front of the house and more functional support areas.”

The firm plans to move during the second quarter of this year. 

Vacant for more than a year, two adjacent West Village retail spaces have hit the market at 135 Seventh Avenue South and 163 West 10th Street. Formerly the home of an Italian bakery, Landbrot Bakery & Bar, that “thrived for 15 years,” according to the listing’s broker, and a barbershop, each space has the opportunity to be reinvented by tenants, including possible restaurants. Initially envisioned for a single tenant, the individual spaces have since been subdivided to accommodate separate occupants. Tom Brady of Town spoke to The Commercial Observer last week about the opportunities.

The Seventh Avenue South location does have unique quirks. “It’s a tricky space in a great location,” Mr. Brady said. “It’s long and narrow, with frontage on Seventh Avenue South.”

The location includes an outdoor courtyard ideal for alfresco seating. A potential deal for a high-end salon that eventually fell through included plans to decorate the outdoor area and offer coffee to clients.

"The 1,100-square-foot space at 135 Seventh Avenue South is an ideal West Village restaurant space,” said Mr. Brady, who highlighted “comfort food” or another dining style that has not yet saturated the market as an ideal tenant. The space is already vented for restaurant tenants but does not include kitchen equipment. 

Available for immediate occupancy, the 1,000-square-foot space at 163 West 10th Street is being marketed as a speakeasy-style restaurant space. “It would make an ideal tavern,” Mr. Brady noted. “The basement space would not work as retail, but it would work as a Waverly Inn-type speakeasy.”

Both spaces are move-in ready and will be delivered white box to tenants.

Insight Venture Partners has signed a 31,285-square-foot lease for a relocation to a space on the 36th-floor at the W.R. Grace Building on Bryant Park at 1114 Avenue of the Americas.

The private equity and venture capital firm struck a 15-year deal at rents starting in the low-$90s per square foot with landlord Brookfield Office Properties and is relocating from the 26-story Buchmann Tower at 680 Fifth Avenue, The Real Deal reported.

The 1.5-million-square-foot building, completed in 1974, was designed principally by Gordon Bunshaft and commissioned by the W.R. Grace Company. Its main entrance along 42nd Street, between 5th and 6^th, overlooks Bryant Park and the New York Public Library.

The recognizable concave vertical slope of its north and south-facing facades, on 42nd and 43rd Street, resemble the Solow Building, another of Bunshaft buildings. It is said that he used the initial, rejected façade design for the Solow building in his design for the Grace Building. 

In 2005, the City University of New York opened a "Welcome Center" on the ground floor of the Grace Building as an information center for prospective students.

In October, consulting firm Bain & Company took a nearly 100,000-square-foot space spread over three consecutive upper floors at the tower.

Brookfield Office Properties is Lower Manhattan’s largest landlord and is in the midst of a $250 million overhaul of the office and retail complex at Brookfield Place, where an impressively long list of high-end retailers have signed contracts to occupy its retail wing.

Jones Lang LaSalle’s Barbara Winter represented the tenant in the deal, while Brookfield was represented in-house by Sarah Pontius and Duncan McCuaig, according to the TRD report. 

The Institute for Career Development has signed a five-year, 26,558-square-foot lease at East End Capital’s 123 William Street. 

The deal is for the 27-story property's entire fifth floor, where asking rents rang in at $37 per square foot, according to Crain’s, which first reported on the deal.  

Brad Gerla of CBRE told Crain’s that the building’s proximity to the new Fulton transit hub, just across the street, was a main attraction for the Institute for Career Development in its relocation from its former home in Midtown South. 

"The transit center has been a huge draw for tenants," said Mr. Gerla, who handles leasing for the landlord, along with Howard Fiddle. "For tenants at 123 William St., the door to the area's dense collection of subway lines is just across the street.”

Jones Lang LaSalle’s Paul Maas represented the tenant. 

East End Capital and its ownership partner GreenOak Real Estate purchased the property in October for around $130 million and have since unveiled millions of dollars in planned improvements, according to the publication, including a new lobby, windows and elevators, which brokers said would likely be completed in time for the second quarter.

Mr. Gerla said he and Mr. Fiddle are close to securing tenants for the property's sixth and seventh floors, which would amount to an additional 50,000 square feet of leasing.

The invisible—yet mentally substantial—wall on Canal Street that once separated Midtown South’s young, hip upstarts from Downtown’s financial office base has eroded, something most real estate observers became well aware of early this year. With 4 World Trade Center open, 1 World Trade Center opening soon and officially earning its title as the country’s tallest, and a revamped Brookfield Place soon coming online, a plethora of tech and other tenants see newfound value in the Downtown submarket.

There are certain restaurants where New York power brokers have wined and dined business contacts and clients for decades—think the Four Seasons, Michael’s, Gotham Bar & Grill. But why not ring in the New Year by breaking out of the box? There’s a fresh spate of restaurants exceptionally worthy of your next power lunch or business dinner, so wow them and kick off 2014 by closing a deal at one of these hot newcomers. 

The CRE Finance Council's January Conference will be held in Miami Beach. (Photo via Getty Images)

Here are our picks for the month's must-attend events.

January 13-15

It’s time to make friends, family and office-bound coworkers green with envy again—at least for those who live in nonswimsuit-supportive January climates. Kick off 2014 in Miami Beach, as CRE Finance Council is hosting its January Conference 2014 at the Fontainebleau in Miami. The event will also include an analysis of investment opportunities, balance sheets and capital markets.

CRE Finance Council: January Conference 2014, Fontainebleau, 4441 Collins Avenue, Miami Beach, Fla., contact Elizabeth Janicki at 646-884-7577 or ejanicki@crefc.org for more information

January 14

According to NAIOP’s Colorado chapter, the federal government is continuing to create uncertainty for business. So if warm weather winter conference destinations aren’t your thing, head to Denver, for the group’s Annual Economic Forecast Breakfast, and learn how economic trends will impact the Colorado commercial real estate market this year.

NAIOP: Annual Economic Forecast Breakfast, Marriott City Center, 1701 California Street, Denver, 7-9 a.m., go to naiop-colorado.org for more information

January 15

IGlobal Forum is hosting a summit and deal-sourcing event for specialty finance. Professionals in specialty finance firms, private equity fund managers, hedge funds, senior lenders and wealth and asset management firms are encouraged to apply.

IGlobal Specialty Finance Summit 2014, Park Lane Hotel, 36 Central Park South, New York City, 7:45 a.m.-5:15 p.m., go to iglobalforum.com/spfinance for more information

The golf season is over, so it is time to shift the networking indoors. Join RELA for its 23rd Annual New Year’s Networking Event at Cipriani in Midtown.

23rd Annual New Year’s Networking Event, Cipriani, 110 East 42nd Street, New York City, 6-9 p.m., go to rela.org for more information

January 16

The Real Estate Board of New York is hosting its 118th Annual Banquet at the New York Hilton. The event will celebrate the board’s longstanding history and prominence in the New York real estate market. Industry bigwigs Stephen Green, Kenneth Fisher, Joel Picket, Robin Abrams, Thomas Hill and Robert Fink will be honored at this year’s event.

Real Estate Board of New York: 118th Annual Banquet, New York Hilton Hotel, 1335 Avenue of the Americas, New York City, contact MaryAnn Aviles at 212-532-3100 or maviles@rebny.com for more information

January 22-24

IMN is hosting its 11th Annual Winter Forum along the Pacific Coast in Laguna Beach, Calif. About 1,000 real estate professionals will attend to discuss the state of the market and future opportunities.

IMN: The 11th Annual Winter Forum on Real Estate Opportunity and Private Funding Investment, Montage Resort & Spa, 30801 South Coast Highway, Laguna Beach, Calif., contact Andy Melvin at 212-901-0542 or amelvin@imn.org for more information

The Xavier Society for the Blind has sold its former headquarters at 154 East 23rd Street for $9 million, The Commercial Observer has learned.

The decision to sell was motivated in part by the burgeoning real estate market in Midtown South but also by changes in Xavier’s mission. The organization previously produced Braille and large-print books and had several libraries at the property that were open to the public. Technology innovations such as tablets and e-readers have since reduced the need for those types of physical materials.

“Xavier had been at this location for decades, and it got to the point in their organization where a lot of the technology had progressed to where they didn’t need to store their materials,” said David Schechtman, Esq. of Eastern Consolidated, who represented the seller. “They didn’t need as much physical space.”

The 15,783-square-foot Midtown South property, located between Lexington and Third Avenues, is likely to be converted to a residential property. The property has been well maintained but is in need of significant upgrading and investment, according to Mr. Schechtman.

“We marketed the property broadly for close to a year and capitalized on a very hot development market,” he added in a prepared statement. 

The buyer is Omnia Group Ltd., according to a source familiar with the transaction. The buyer was also represented by Eastern Consolidated through Alan Miller.

At the time the sale went to contract, it achieved a new pricing benchmark on East 23rd Street at $562 per square foot. It has since been surpassed by the sale of United Cerebral Palsy’s building at 122 East 23rd Street to Toll Brothers for $135 million.

Xavier Society for the Blind had occupied the Midtown South property since 1948. The organization recently relocated to 2 Penn Plaza.