Could the NBA try it again?
http://www.nypost.com/seven/10032007..._do.htm?page=0
WELL, HOOP-DE-DO
NBA SCOUTING MANHATTAN SITES FOR OFFICES
October 3, 2007 -- THE National Basketball Association may be trying to bounce back to the Big Apple.
We've learned that the league is scouting locations through Barry Gosin and Moshe Sukenik at Newmark Knight Frank. A company spokeswoman declined comment.
In 2001, we told you the NBA was trying to cut a deal to become the anchor tenant for a new tower on Ninth Avenue, in which the league would consolidate its Olympic Towers office at 645 Fifth Ave. with its larger, Secaucus, N.J., office, bringing the jobs to the city. But the pre-9/11 city balked at big tax breaks and the NBA dug into Jersey.
According to CoStar Group data, the NBA currently has about 162,415 feet overlooking St. Patrick's Cathedral in Olympic Tower, plus its giant NBA store up the block at 666 Fifth Ave.
Its Olympic Tower lease expires on July 1, 2010, as does a new sublease for 18,273 at 477 Madison Ave. In Secaucus, its lease for 218,560 feet at 450 Harmon Meadow Rd. ends on June 21, 2011.
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BLAST FROM THE PAST
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpag...56C0A9679C8B63
Unhappy With City Tax Breaks, N.B.A. Drops Move to West Side
By CHARLES V. BAGLI
May 25, 2001
The National Basketball Association's plans to move its headquarters to a site at Ninth Avenue and 33rd Street behind the Farley Post Office died this week after the city declined to provide a large enough package of tax breaks, executives involved in the negotiations said.
That does not mean that the New York Knicks have lost interest in the site. The Cablevision Systems Corporation -- which owns the Knicks, the Rangers and Madison Square Garden -- is considering the site, among others, for a new arena.
The site is in the semi-industrial neighborhood that is awash in proposals for Olympic stadiums, skyscrapers and the expansion of the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center. With few development sites available elsewhere in Manhattan, builders and city officials view the far West Side as their next frontier.
The basketball league had planned to move from the Olympic Tower on Fifth Avenue to a proposed office tower on the Ninth Avenue site, which is controlled by Harvey Schulweis. The association also planned to move nearly 500 employees at N.B.A. Entertainment from Secaucus, N.J., to the tower.
As part of the deal, Mr. Schulweis needed the city to extend a 1990 special permit for a one-million-square-foot tower, which is to expire next month. The league wanted a steep property tax break as well as the elimination of sales and mortgage recording taxes. The league had planned to take about half the space in the proposed building.
The site is at the northern end of a block on the west side of Ninth Avenue, from 31st to 33rd Street. Since part of the block is over a railroad track, the developer would have to build a platform, which could cost $40 million.
Last week, real estate executives and city officials said, the City Economic Development Corporation told the league that it was willing to give the project a sales tax break and a limited property tax abatement, but that it could not be as generous as the league had hoped. A few days later, the league decided it was not enough, they said.
Mr. Schulweis, who heads a partnership that has controlled the site for nearly 15 years, would not discuss his talks with the league.
''I'm moving ahead as best I can to wind up with a completed building and a tenant,'' Mr. Schulweis said. ''The N.B.A. was an option that may or may not materialize.''
Michael Bass, a spokesman for the league, said the city's tax offer was not ''of a sufficient magnitude'' to make the project workable. ''We're still looking for a way to consolidate,'' he said. Two executives involved in the negotiations with the city said the league was considering whether to expand at or near its offices in Secaucus.
One city official said the city was unlikely to extend Mr. Schulweis's permit if the league dropped out of the project.
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http://www.observer.com/node/44399
N.B.A. Scoreless in Bid To Get New Headquarters
by NYO Staff
May 13, 2001
While the playoffs dribble on (sans the New York Knicks), the National Basketball Association is looking for a new court. Positioning itself as the star tenant in an office tower proposed by Schulweis Realty and Tishman Speyer, the N.B.A. joined a team of lawyers and developers for a game of 5 on 50 at Board 4's May 2 meeting.
Their hope? To score enough points with the community to win an extension of the existing permit for development of a building over a railyard platform at the southwest corner of Ninth Avenue and 33rd Street.
....But while it's pending before City Planning, the developers also had to make their case to Board 4, which has an advisory role in the process. And that proved almost as challenging as actually erecting a tower above a 22-acre cavern created by a rail cut-through.
Board 4 never supported the proposal when it was first floated a dozen years ago, and this time around the members again gave a cold shoulder to Schulweis Realty's lawyers, from Rosenman & Colin, who re-pitched the plan to them on May 2.
Even before its monthly meeting, the board had drafted a letter to the City Planning Commission urging rejection of the proposal. Edward Kirkland, chairman of the board's preservation and planning committee and a board member for 16 years, told The Observer, "We did not oppose [it] strongly before, but we did have concerns-mostly traffic and displacement of residents living in neighborhood rooming houses."
Attorney Michael Sillerman, of Rosenman & Colin, told the board members that the developers' request was not extraordinary. "There is reasonable land-use rationale," he said. "Half of this 80,000-square-foot site is vacant, and the rest of it requires money and risk-taking." He concluded by mentioning the difficulty of building over a railyard, apparently alluding to the amount of time it has already taken just to get to the actual construction.
The N.B.A. now operates from multiple offices, Mr. Benjamin told the board; Fifth Avenue is home to the corporate headquarters, while entertainment production takes place in Secaucus, N.J. Mr. Benjamin called the arrangement "inefficient" and inadequate for the 21st-century needs of professional sports organizations.
"You think of the N.B.A. as a league that plays basketball," Mr. Benjamin said, "but we and other sports leagues have become major entertainment entities." Sensing he had not quite scored, Mr. Benjamin took another shot: "We're losing our creative juices when we're not all under one roof."
Though consolidating in the Garden State is an alternative, the Association prefers to be near Madison Square Garden, or at least in Manhattan. (The proposal has no relationship to the many plans swirling around to move the Garden, move Penn Station or build an Olympic, Jets or baseball stadium in the neighborhood.)
When a board member suggested browsing other boroughs, Mr. Benjamin jumped in, saying: "The N.B.A. would not be interested, with all due respect to Staten Island and Brooklyn, because so many employees live in New Jersey."
Board member Ross Graham rebounded: "At the risk of the wrath of my family, maybe we should let you go to New Jersey." The crowd went wild.
She added: "Even the N.B.A. is not really worth a special permit. They'll probably get it anyway, but we don't have to help them." All but six members of the Board agreed, passing the motion to send the letter expressing their disapproval to the City Planning Commission.