Crain's New York Business

Fox Corp. plans to vacate a quarter of its space at 1211 Sixth Ave., a move that would come only three years after Rupert Murdoch’s media empire agreed to stay in the Midtown tower until 2042. Fox intends in November to leave 330,000 of its 1.25 million square feet in the building, credit-rating agency KBRA said in a report Wednesday in which it downgraded 1211 Sixth’s $1 billion mortgage, citing an “impending decline in the property’s occupancy.” The building houses the corporate headquarters for Fox and News Corp., studios for Fox News, and the Wall Street Journal and New York Post newsrooms. Read more here: https://lnkd.in/ghUE3f5C

Compass is taking the old concept of whisper listings—homes available for sale to those in-the-know without their hitting the public market—to a whole new level, even as industry bigwigs are loudly opposed. A curated, Compass-brokers-only website that potentially allows the brokerage to keep the buyer- and seller-side brokers’ fees in-house, the program is intended to give homebuyers and -sellers a lift in a tight housing market. Prospective buyers can bid without being muscled aside by as many competitors, while sellers can tweak pricing without coming across to the general public as desperate, the thinking goes among its fans. But just about everybody in the real estate industry—brokers, appraisers, data providers such as StreetEasy and even the Real Estate Board of New York itself—says privatizing listings at a time of limited inventory will make the housing crisis worse. Particularly harmful to buyers, who rely on transparency, the service may also run afoul of fair housing laws with its VIP-focused approach, the critics say. Read more here: https://lnkd.in/gqKeRSaY

Up on Broadway, Succession star Sarah Snook is breaking the rules of traditional theater (and bringing the house down while she’s at it) in a revolutionary production of The Picture of Dorian Gray. At Lincoln Center, you can hear a pin drop during the entire second half of Ghosts, a haunting nepo-baby phantasmagoria from the Swedish master of effete dismay, Henrik Ibsen. And that’s on top of ongoing delights such as little-urchin-that-could Little Shop of Horrors, Titus Burgess’ chaotic twirl in Oh Mary!, adorable robots in love at Maybe Happy Ending, the dueling divas of Death Becomes Her and much more coming to the theater scene this season. Read more here: https://lnkd.in/gBxxmvyr

S&P Global downgraded the credit rating for 1515 Broadway, saying its future bodes ill unless SL Green snags a casino license for the big Times Square tower. The property is where Carson Daly hosted “Total Request Live” in the late ‘90s and early 2000s, and MTV’s offices are still there. However, “sustainable” cash flow at the building has fallen nearly 10%, S&P said in a report late Thursday, adding that one measure of the 1.7 million-square-foot tower’s value has fallen by 40%, to $634 million. Read more here: https://lnkd.in/dpmTKRan

New York City is preparing to embrace the more than 1 million soccer fans expected to flock to the region for the 2026 FIFA World Cup by spending $20 million on promotional events to lure economic activity to the five boroughs, city officials said Monday. Because World Cup games held in the Garden State are projected to generate more than $2 billion in economic activity for the tristate area, according to state officials, the city’s Economic Development Corp. is chipping in to promote the tournament. Read more here: https://lnkd.in/gJs7tT8V

The 250,000 square-foot retail and entertainment complex known as Harlem USA was a milestone in the neighborhood’s 21st-century renaissance when it opened in 2000. The five-story, $65-milion development at the corner of West 125th Street and Frederick Douglass Boulevard spared residents the trek downtown to shop at Old Navy, work out at a New York Sports Club, or see a movie. But now more than a quarter of Harlem USA’s space sits vacant.While anchor tenants Old Navy and the nine-screen AMC Magic Johnson theater remain open, last week credit-rating agency KBRA warned that the property’s owner could default on the $108 million mortgage and force investors to swallow a $26 million loss on what it calls a “loan of concern.” Read more here: https://lnkd.in/gfymzWsk

By a lopsided 42-8 vote, the City Council in November approved a bill that will put more landlords, rather than tenants, on the hook to pay broker fees. With that, lawmakers beat back a monthslong lobbying campaign by the once-feared Real Estate Board of New York, whose broker members railed against the legislation. The 14,000-member, 129-year-old Real Estate Board has now spent more than a half decade trying to claw back the power it lost in 2019, when Democrats took control of state government and promptly passed a set of sweeping changes to rent regulations that the Board’s landlord constituency has been largely powerless to reverse. Read more here: https://lnkd.in/gaVWb4Bz

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority plans to stop issuing and refilling its ubiquitous orange and blue MetroCards at the end of the year, relying on its tap-and-go OMNY system for fare payment in the subway and on city buses, transit officials told Crain’s. Riders with existing MetroCards will be able to use them into 2026, the MTA says, and will have two years from the listed expiration date to transfer funds to an OMNY card or be reimbursed. Read more here: https://lnkd.in/ggVbT86U

A beloved bakery associated with famed Italian restaurant Michael's of Brooklyn is closing for good after three decades in business, the owners announced Sunday. Salvatore DiLeonardo, the chef and one of the three partners behind Michael's Pastry Shop at 2923 Ave. R, posted on social media a goodbye missive to the Marine Park and southern Brooklyn community he's long baked for. He claimed in the post that the bakery's longtime landlord wouldn't renew its lease and said the bakery, known for its Italian pastries such as Sfogliatelle, rainbow cookies and custom cakes, would shutter this month. "Baking is my passion, and I have been blessed to share that with so many of you over these years. I wish I could continue this journey that I started years ago that I love so much," DiLeonardo wrote in the post, which has since garnered hundreds of likes and comments. Read more here: https://lnkd.in/gZuTp_uK

This past fall, a few months after he had quit vaping, Sean Medlin came across a friend’s vape while looking for a set of keys in a pants pocket. “?It wasn't just a vape; it was the vape I was stuck on, same flavor and everything,” he said. “?I remember looking at it and studying it for, like, 30 seconds, and my only thought was, ‘I can't believe this used to have such control over my life.’ And I had no desire to hit it.” This was a big deal to Medlin, 36, a software engineer in Tulsa, Okla. He had never been proud to vape, but it felt so normalized around him. “?I'd go anywhere. I could just vape, vape, vape, vape, vape, and it didn't even matter,” he said. “I sought it out because, seemingly, it was helping me with my anxiety. ?I always told myself I wasn't actually an addict, and I was going to quit as soon as I was done with this one.” For over three years, he had tried to quit cold turkey, but it wouldn’t stick. Eventually, he looked up cigarette and nicotine replacement therapy online and came across old-looking government websites where he’d have to submit forms — a process that felt ridiculous. Then, one day, he instead typed “vape cessation programs” on his browser “to see if that was even a thing,” he said, and the first result was for a company called Jones. Read more here: https://lnkd.in/gJmRTurM