Aaron Elstein

New York

Senior Finance Reporter at Crain's New York Business

Reporter @CrainsNewYork. A-train rider. Trump hung up after I asked why he took a property tax credit for middle-class New Yorkers. https://t.co/AXWOwCfU5f

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Articles

Rising construction costs weigh on plan for developing 343 Madison Ave.

2 days ago | crainsnewyork.com | Aaron Elstein

The CEO of office developer BXP, Owen Thomas, is champing at the bit to build a 46-story tower at 343 Madison Ave. “This site is ready to go,” he told Crain’s at a groundbreaking ceremony last October. Months later, the dream remains deferred. The problem isn’t filling a 1 million square-foot tower that would offer direct access to Grand Central Terminal and its 750,000 daily visitors. “It’s the best location in Manhattan,” Piper Sandler analyst Alexander Goldfarb said.
South Street Seaport pays CEO’s personal tax bill

3 days ago | crainsnewyork.com | Aaron Elstein

Most workers at the South Street Seaport must reach into their own pockets to pay taxes. That’s not so, however, for the CEO of the unprofitable downtown entertainment complex. Last year Seaport Entertainment Corp. paid $120,000 to cover the tax bill incurred when the movers were called and Chief Executive Anton Nikodemus relocated to New York from Las Vegas.
BlackRock tells senior staff to work in the office five days a week

6 days ago | pionline.com | Aaron Elstein

Breadcrumb Home MONEY MANAGEMENT May 08, 2025 12:24 PM Tweet Share Share Email More Reprints Print Buck Ennis BlackRock's Hudson Yards headquarters BlackRock is telling managing directors to return to the office five days a week, joining the ranks of big companies saying the era of work from home must end.
New York affordable-housing portfolio in financial trouble, Moody's suggests

1 week ago | crainsnewyork.com | Aaron Elstein

Ten years ago, developer A&E Real Estate bet big on affordable housing in New York. Over a two-year period the Midtown-based firm acquired 3,500 apartments across the city for nearly $800 million and invested another $130 million fixing up the units, nearly 90% of which were rent-stabilized. In 2015 Mayor Bill de Blasio praised A&E for buying Riverton Square in Harlem and agreeing to keep most apartments affordable after the previous owner lost the 1,229-unit complex to lenders in 2009.
Vornado Realty Trust forecasts sharp increase in office occupancy

1 week ago | crainsnewyork.com | Aaron Elstein

Vornado Realty Trust predicted its office towers will be as crowded as before the pandemic in “a couple of years” – a bold prediction for the developer that, filings show, has more vacant space than at any time since Covid-19 upended the world of work. The occupancy rate in the big developer’s New York office portfolio dipped to 84% in the first quarter, a four percentage-point decline from 2024.
Occupancy falls at New York Hilton Midtown

1 week ago | crainsnewyork.com | Aaron Elstein

Fewer travelers checked in last quarter at the New York Hilton Midtown, one of the city’s biggest hotels, and the property’s owner could turn unprofitable this year due to a decline in overseas guests. “We’ve got tremendous uncertainty now for all the reasons we all know,” Thomas Baltimore, CEO of Park Hotels & Resorts, said on a conference call Monday. Occupancy at the Hilton came in at 71% in the first quarter, down from 75% a year ago, while revenue per available room ticked down 0.3%, to $190.
RFR sells 522 Fifth Ave. to Amazon

1 week ago | crainsnewyork.com | Aaron Elstein

RFR Holding announced Friday that it has sold 522 Fifth Ave., a property that had been in foreclosure proceedings. Amazon said it is the buyer. The price wasn’t disclosed. Amazon is expected to occupy the entire 23-story, 600,000-square-foot building at the corner of West 44th Street. The property is five blocks north of the former Lord & Taylor building at 424 Fifth Ave. that Amazon acquired for $1 billion in 2020 to use as its New York headquarters.
New York-based KKR suffered a rare quarterly net loss

1 week ago | crainsnewyork.com | Aaron Elstein

Asset management giant KKR suffered its first quarterly loss since the fall of 2022 after a division sold investments at a loss. Global Atlantic, a KKR-owned insurer, took a $1 billion loss from selling bonds in its $190 billion investment portfolio, more than half of which is constituted of corporate debt, commercial mortgages, and real estate investments. The investment loss was the reason KKR swung to a $186 million net loss last quarter from a $682 million gain in the year-earlier period.
How far are New Yorkers willing to walk to the office? The answer is driving leasing.

2 weeks ago | crainsnewyork.com | Aaron Elstein

An invisible border divides the world of Midtown office towers. On the side of the line closer to Grand Central Terminal, many buildings are full of asset managers, law firms and others paying top-dollar rents. On the other side, more buildings are struggling. For instance, the vacancy rate is just 7% for all of Rockefeller Center, the massive complex at Fifth Avenue between West 48th and 51st streets. Yet just a block north, at 31 W. 52nd St., the Class A tower is 33% empty.
Empire State Building owner reports 12% drop in observatory traffic

2 weeks ago | crainsnewyork.com | Aaron Elstein

The Empire State Building’s owner reported a 12% decline in visitors to its popular observatory last quarter, which officials attributed to poor weather and the late Easter holiday instead of President Donald Trump’s trade war possibly deterring tourists’ visits to the city. “We have not detected any significant shifts in demand that we can’t ascribe to logical events like really bad weather,” said Tony Malkin, chief executive of Empire State Realty Trust, on an earnings call Wednesday.