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July 15, 2008
Developer Cuts Back on Plans for Tower to House Baseball’s Cable Network
The New York Times
by Charles Bagli
A 21-story office building planned in East Harlem for Major League Baseball is shrinking.
The tower’s developer, Vornado Realty Trust, had planned to begin construction in April on what would be the home for professional baseball’s newly created cable network, which is scheduled to make its debut in January with 50 million subscribers.
But, according to real estate executives and city officials, Vornado’s inability to finance the $435 million project, known as Harlem Park, has delayed construction and is doing what critics who had complained about the tower’s size could not: reduce its height by about a third. That is in part because the developer seems to have had problems signing up other tenants for the building.
Vornado is now considering a revised plan for a 14-story building at 125th Street and Park Avenue and renegotiating its lease with Major League Baseball, the executives and officials said.
...It is the latest example of the difficulty developers have had in trying to borrow money for projects amid the national debt crisis, even projects that only a few months ago seemed to be on the fast track. After completing the excavation for his Beekman Tower project downtown, the developer Bruce Ratner had to stop work for three months while his company went from bank to bank putting together the construction financing.
NoLandGrab: Judging from the most recent developments in the financial and real estate markets, securing financing, especially for mega-projects, is going to get harder before it gets easier.
Posted by eric at July 15, 2008 11:09 AM