Who thought working in a closet was a good idea, anyway?

Davis Polk said the potential hires were leaders of student groups that had issued statements condemning Israel. But it also said it was reconsidering because some of the students had said they didn’t authorize the letters.

The airline said in an internal memo that it would board economy passengers with window seats before others in economy to save time.

Dallas-Fort Worth’s office sector is still reeling from the pandemic, and Plano might be the epicenter of its struggles. 

The north Dallas suburb is home to four of the region’s top 10 largest office vacancies, totalling nearly 3.4 million square feet of available space, the Dallas Morning News reported. Those four buildings alone account for almost 5 percent of DFW’s 70 million square feet of office vacancies, which includes sublease space.

As of August, the office vacancy rate in Plano was 22.5 percent, compared to 18 percent in DFW overall. The West Plano-Upper Tollway area had 10.31 million square feet of empty space through the third quarter, trailing only downtown Dallas, which had 10.34 million square feet. 

“Approximately 33 percent – 19.5 million square feet – of direct space on the market is in blocks over 100,000 square feet, highlighting how large companies have shed space in light of remote/hybrid work,” Andrew Matheny, research manager at commercial property firm Transwestern and Costar, told the outlet.

The largest chunk of vacant space in DFW is in Plano’s former EDS Campus at 5400 Legacy Drive, where almost 1.6 million square feet is available and NexPoint Advisors is planning a $3 billion redevelopment into a 22-acre life sciences campus. 

Just a mile down the road, more than 1 million square feet is up for grabs at the former J.C. Penney campus. The next largest vacancies in Plano are at 5320 Legacy Drive and the newly opened Granite Park Six, combining for over 700,000 square feet.

Despite Plano’s struggles, developers remain bullish on the area, as 1.5 million square feet of office space is in the pipeline. Part of the problem in Plano — and downtown Dallas — is that many office buildings are old and outdated. Thus, developers are working to overhaul some of them, either converting them for other uses or renovating them into amenity-filled office environments, which have been the most sought-after corporate destinations in the post-pandemic landscape.

Elsewhere in DFW, some of the largest vacancies include roughly 730,000 square feet in Fort Worth’s former American Airlines headquarters and 589,000 square feet in downtown Dallas’ Fountain Place tower, where landlord Goddard Investment Group is adding a 13,000-square-foot private club.

—Quinn Donoghue 

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Throckmorton Partners may buy part of a Hilton hotel in Downtown San Jose for student housing.

An affiliate of the Mill Valley-based investor is negotiating a price for the shorter of two towers of the 805-room Signia by Hilton San Jose at 170 South Market Street, the Silicon Valley Business Journal reported, citing a city memo. 

The seller would be San Ramon-based Eagle Canyon Capital, led by Sam Hirbod. The San Jose City Council was set to decide Tuesday, Oct. 17, whether to allow the hotel split.

If the sale goes through, the Signia by Hilton would operate in the north tower, now undergoing a renovation. The university would take the curving, 13-story south tower.

The California State University system, on behalf of San Jose State University, is looking at leasing the 264-room south tower to house students. 

Eagle Canyon listed the south tower, an annex to the 541-room main tower at the former Fairmont San Jose, last spring for an undisclosed price.

The deal with Throckmorton would give the university an option to buy the 264-room wing, according to the memo. Its ground floor now contains a cafe and a Morton’s steakhouse.

The school and university system haven’t reached a final agreement to lease the building, Charlie Faas, SJSU’s vice president for administration and finance, told the Business Journal.

A potential lease of the hotel tower is one answer to the problem of housing for San Jose State,  largely a commuter school. Nearly 42 percent of its students have housing insecurity, according to a 2021 survey.

The university plans to replace its on-campus Washburn Hall dormitory with two new ones with more than 1,000 beds. It also plans to replace an off-campus state office building with a 24-story tower at 100 Paseo de San Antonio with 1,000 homes for faculty, staff and graduate students.

The former Fairmont fell into bankruptcy and closed its doors in March 2021, saying business shutdowns and travel restrictions from the coronavirus pandemic had ruined its bottom line. 

An ownership group led by Hirbod used the bankruptcy to do more than reorganize the hotel’s crumbling finances. It ousted hotel operator Accor Management and replaced it with Signia by Hilton. It reopened in April last year, after a $65 million renovation.

During the pandemic, the Bay Area hotel market was ranked among the worst in the nation. Downtown San Jose, a market for business travel and conventions, was especially hard hit.

“We had one of the best-performing hotel economies in the country (pre-pandemic), and that travel has not come back to the levels we had hoped, and we’re not seeing any indicators in the foreseeable future that we are going to return to those levels,” Ben Roschke, vice president of research and strategic development at Team San Jose, told the city’s Economic Development Committee last month.

— Dana Bartholomew

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Nine years ago, Annie Leibovitz probably couldn’t picture selling her Upper West Side duplex for significantly less than she paid for it.

The famed photographer put her co-op on the market for $8.6 million, the New York Times reported. Leibovitz purchased the unit at the Brentmore at 88 Central Park West for $11.3 million in 2014. 

The unit is 3,500 square feet, breaking down an asking price of $2,457 per square foot.

The UWS unit has four bedrooms and three bathrooms. It’s on the fifth and sixth floors of the 12-story building, which has been the home to celebrities including Robert De Niro, Paul Simon and Sting.

The pad overlooks Central Park, a motivator when Leibovitz first saw the apartment a decade ago. Leibovitz updated the apartment after purchasing it, though many pre-war details remain. Monthly maintenance for the unit is $10,307.

Amenities at the Brentmore include a doorman, private storage space and a gym. The Corcoran Group’s Deborah Kern has the listing.

Leibovitz told the outlet she is ready to move on because her children are out of school and her work is downtown; last year, she purchased a full-floor condo in the West Village for $6.5 million. Her family home, meanwhile, is upstate in Rhinebeck.

The downtown and Upstate properties were the subject of a nonpayment lawsuit against Leibovitz with in 2009. Lender Art Capital Group claimed the photographer was behind on hundreds of thousands of dollars in unpaid fees after borrowing $24 million. The parties reached a settlement deal that included Leibovitz purchasing the rights to act as exclusive agent in the sale of her real estate. 

The co-op’s discount from nine years ago adds to recent evidence that the city’s storied co-ops are losing some of their luster. Trophy co-ops are either languishing on the market or selling for pennies on the dollar as wealthy buyers flock to condos with their fresher amenities and less restrictive entry requirements.

Co-ops’ widespread restrictions on financing have deterred buyers, along with a lack of opportunity to shield buyers’ identities while requiring meticulous financial disclosures and can often reject applicants without giving a reason, sparking accusations of discrimination.

Co-ops also often restrict how apartments are utilized. Renovations are more challenging to undertake as boards have a say over even the tiniest change.

— Holden Walter-Warner

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Choice Hotels International went public Tuesday with a $7.8B stock-and-cash proposal to take over Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, seeking to create a U.S. budget hotel goliath. 
Hours later, Wyndham publicly rejected the offer, citing regulatory and execution concerns.
Choice has been seeking to buy Wyndham since May, The Wall Street Journal reported, but those talks had happened in private until Tuesday morning when Choice wrote a “bear hug” letter.
The offer of $90 per share, with $49.50 in cash and 0.324 shares of Choice’s common stock for each Wyndham share, was a 30% premium over Wyndham’s last closing price, per Reuters. When including debt that Choice would assume, the total value of the offer…

Israel’s conflict with Hamas, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the rise of China have brought a boom for weapons makers and a chance for Washington to build closer military ties to other countries.

Fixed-rate bonds that lost value as interest rates rose can even help out in some ways.

Wyndham rejects the offer, saying it involves significant business and execution risk.