All Posts By American Hellenic Chamber of Commerce

By ALISON GREGOR

Efforts by some have been ongoing for several years to transform Manhattan’s Midtown East from an office district rife with flashy, stylish hotels into something more residential. Now, with the construction of 100 East 53rd Street, the neighborhood will get another character-changing building.

The 63-story tower, being developed by a team that includes RFR Holding, Hines, and the Chinese investors China Vanke and China Cinda Asset Management, is going up on the site of a former YWCA, where about 10 years ago, RFR and its partners planned to build an upscale hotel called the Shangri-La.

To build a taller tower, RFR transferred unused air rights from the nearby Seagram Building at 375 Park Avenue. The hotel, which would have had more than 200 rooms and more than a dozen private condominiums, was to be designed by the British architect Norman Foster. That plan was derailed by the devastated global economy, and the project faced the threat of foreclosure.

Today, Aby J. Rosen, a founder and principal of RFR, said the developers are ready to go forward with 100 East 53rd Street, which will have 94 condominium units. The developers will use the original designs of Foster + Partners, and will continue to work with Mr. Foster on the project. Excavation began in early 2014, and builders have already poured concrete up to floors in the 40s. Mr. Rosen said he hoped to have the building, which will have mostly one- and two-bedroom apartments with prices starting at around $3.35 million, done in the spring of 2017. He said he never would have considered working with another architect on the building.
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The new building’s amenities will include a fitness center, resident lounge and a lap pool. Credit DBOX

“We hired Norman a long time ago when we wanted to do this,” Mr. Rosen said. “I took Norman to the site, and he fell in love with it, sketched away, and within 10 minutes he had the design that he wanted.” Because the site is next to the Seagram Building, which was designed by Mies van der Rohe and Philip Johnson, Mr. Rosen said, “you need an architect with strong self-confidence — you really have to make it work next to one of the most important landmarks in America, so he understood that.”

The slender tower will have a 711-foot white undulating curtain wall designed to contrast with the dark bronzed look of the Seagram Building. The apartments will have high ceilings of around 10 to nearly 11 feet, according to Leonard Steinberg, the president of Compass, which will be marketing the building. “When it comes to a demand for residential in this neighborhood and this whole area, there’s been a whole resurgence,” he said. “On Park Avenue, on Fifth Avenue, people really live here, even on the weekend. So we decided, ‘Why don’t we do all of it residential?’ ”

The developers, though, plan to do something “really special” on the first four floors, Mr. Rosen said. Most likely, “the first two floors will be a high-end food court and a world class restaurant,” he said, declining to reveal more, except to say that it would be “neighborhood-transforming.” Many tenant amenities will be on the third and fourth floors. Building amenities will include a 24-hour doorman, keyed elevator access, a fitness center, yoga and ballet rooms, sauna and steam rooms, a 60-by-15-foot lap pool, a library and resident lounge.

The building will feature lofts on floors five through nine, and more traditional apartments on upper floors. One-bedrooms will range from 1,140 square feet to 1,815 square feet, two-bedrooms from 1,638 square feet to 4,607. Alcove lofts will be 1,034 square feet. “So a real variety of sizes, and that would automatically imply a nice variety of price points,” Mr. Rosen said.

There will also be three-bedrooms of 3,385 square feet and a four-bedroom penthouse of 6,760 square feet. Most units will be priced between $5 million and $14 million, with the penthouse to be listed for $65 million, he said. “The market is there for a certain type of buyer — one looking at one-bedrooms, or two bedrooms,” Mr. Rosen said. “We believe people want to have the best, but it doesn’t have to mean a three-, four- for five-bedroom pied-à-terre mind-set.”

Article published inNew York Times on Oct 26, 2015

Online retailer Amazon is planning to launch its own line of fashion apparel to cater to customers seeking low prices.

At the WWD Apparel and Retail CEO Summit, Amazon Fashion vice president of clothing and Amazon’s Shopbop unit CEO Jeff Yurcisin was quoted by Buzzfeed.com as saying: “For Amazon, we know our customers love brands, many of the brands in this room…and that’s where the lion’s share of our business comes from. “When we see gaps, when certain brands have actually decided for their own reasons not to sell with us, our customer still wants a product like that.”

All this while, Amazon Fashion’s efforts have been focused on convincing clothing brands to sell their goods on its website for low prices and with improved presentation.

Amazon has considered food and apparel as two segments where it aims to tap opportunities in coming years. In late, it was reported that the firm intends to launch several private-label grocery products.

Last week, the online retailer had announced that it was hiring 100,000 seasonal workers to ramp up services for holiday shopping.

This number is a 25% increase from last year’s 80,000 during the holiday season.

Other retailers such as Walmart, Target, and Kohl’s are adding around the same number of short term employees as they did last year during the same period. However, Macy’s, J.C. Penney, and Toys R Us, are going slow on hiring than they did last year, reported The Wall Street Journal.

Earlier this month, Amazon had pumped Rs.12.37bn ($189m) into Amazon Seller Services in India, marking the online retailer’s biggest capital injection into its Indian flagship unit since 2013 when it entered the Indian shores.

Article published in Retail Business Review on Oct. 29, 2015

The United Nations Conference for Trade and Development (UNCTAD) in Switzerland has adopted a new agreement on olive oil that comes into effect January 1, 2017.

The new agreement is based on the text adopted in June by the International Olive Council Members but includes changes that make certain points clearer, the IOC said in a press release.

Since January, the IOC had been operating under a temporary extension to the International Agreement on Olive Oil and Table Olives (2005).

This new text takes into account developments in the worldwide olive oil industry and reasserts the role of the International Olive Council (IOC) as a center for information and documentation dissemination regarding olive oil products, as well as reiterating IOC as a forum for industry stakeholders, the IOC said.

In addition, the text emphasizes the standardization of national and international legislation about the physical, chemical and organoleptic characteristics of olive oils, olive pomace oil and table olives, in a bid to “prevent obstacles to trade.”

See more: New Draft International Agreement on Olive Oil and Table Olives

The UNCTAD formally adopted the text during discussions in Geneva last week.

According to the IOC release, the new agreement is simple, more rational and more condensed than previous versions and features a modified system for calculating the distribution of participation shares that aims to encourage consumer countries to join.

“It is aimed at facilitating the participation of importer countries,” it said.

“The next text will enter into force on 1st January 2017 and will remain in force until 31 December 2026. It is the culmination of two years of discussion by a special working group set up in 2013 and followed by the proceedings at the international conference.”

The agreement will be open for signature by government and contracting parties throughout next year and the Secretariat General of the United Nations will be the new depositary of the agreement.

The current executive director of the IOC is Frenchman Jean-Louis Barjol, who has served in this position since January 1, 2011 and whose contract will come to an end on December 31, 2015, completing a five-year term.

The meeting in Geneva was the sixth conference held since 1956 to negotiate the agreement the IOC is mandated to administer.

Article published in Olive Oil Times on Oct. 14, 2015