Crains New York - January 14, 2013 - (Page 19)

REPORT REAL ESTATE Looming improvements in and around Grand Central will make it more vital than ever BY DANIEL GEIGER After buying the 44-story office tower at 140 E. 45th St. last year, executives at Rockwood Capital began hearing about a strange phenomenon.Most of the building’s tenants were coming and going via the building’s back door on East 44th Street, the one next to the loading dock. Rather than fight it, Rockwood is spending millions of dollars to glam up that entrance, including handsomely walling off the loading dock. The improvements are designed not just to please the property’s tenants but to capitalize on the property’s biggest asset: its proximity to Grand Central Terminal,just a block from the rear door. “Forty-fourth Street is not going to feel like a back entrance anymore,” said Diana Shieh, an executive at Rockwood who oversees the building. Rockwood’s move is just one of many by which countless landlords and tenants alike are demonstrating that even at the ripe old age of 100, the grand dame of New York’s transit hubs is more central and vital than ever.What’s more,with the See 100 YEARS on Page 22 TIME MARCHES ON: The clock above the station’s southern façade is one of the few things that has not changed in the area over the past century. INSIDESix top industry execs read the tea leaves on 2013 PAGE 26 TV production firm jumps to the financial district, and other deals PAGE 28 Top property sales of 2012 PAGE 30 100 and still growing Times Sq. property’s new vertical Digital technology remakes market for big signs at world’s crossroads BY STEPHEN KLEEGE Times Square’s “spectaculars”— the biggest and best of its famous billboards—draw tens of millions of eyeballs every year and are increasing the interest of some of the city’s biggest landlords. Both SL Green Realty Corp., the city’s largest office landlord, and Vornado Realty Trust are making major moves in the vertical real estate market at the Crossroads of the World. What they and others are betting on is the ability of the new generation of digital signs to become major money spinners akin to the retail spaces they lease out at street level. BRIGHT LIGHTS, De- pending on the location and dimensions, billboard space in Times Square can command $300,000 to $400,000 a month under a longterm contract from a single advertiser.The digital signs open new possibilities to market the space in shorter increments, costing as much as $40,000 for a day in prime holiday seasons. Behind those rates is an army 4.8M 400 KILOWATT-HOURS TOTAL NUMBER of homes that would use that much power 100% PORTION of power that is windgenerated of advertisers clamoring to get their brands in front of the 35 million tourists who pass through the square annually, and the millions more who see the signs on friends’Facebook pages,as well as on YouTube and various television shows. “The advertisers understand See DIGITAL on Page 20 January 14, 2013 | Crain’s New York Business | 19 BIG BILLS Annual electricity usage by the signs at 1 and 2 Times Square buck ennis

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Crains New York - January 14, 2013

Crains New York - January 14, 2013
In the Boroughs
In the Markets
The Insider
Business People
Opinion
Greg David
Small Business
Report: Real Estate
The List
Classifieds
New York, New York
Source Breakfast
Out and About
Snaps

Crains New York - January 14, 2013