For an update on construction financing, The Mortgage Observer met with Barry LePatner, author of Too Big to Fall: America’s Failing Infrastructure and The Way Forward
By Cody Lyon
The Mortgage Observer: What is LePatner &
Associates‚ focus?
Barry LePatner: LePatner & Associates has three distinct hats. Number one is the law firm LePatner & Associates LLP, which serves as a corporate construction counsel for institutions, real estate developers‚ all the folks who generally build in this country today. We do all the contracts on major projects, such as negotiating the complex insurance requirements. We assist them when problems occur during projects, with mediation, arbitration and litigation‚Änd we flll that role as people who have been doing it for over 30 years. Separately, we have LePatner C3 LLC. Many of our clients come to us and say, ‚Änd We not only want you to do the contracts, we want you to be the project managers,‚So so we run the projects.
We coordinate issues during design, we work with our patented C3 method to ensure that construction documents are complete and coordinated before they go out to bid. We are the antithesis of fast-tracking. We are the antithesis of the phony GMP, which means guaranteed maximum price and always comes in 20, 30 percent even 40 percent‚ more than what was
the so-called contract price. And we always complete our projects on time and on budget, saving millions and millions of dollars for our clients because of the methodology developed here at our
firm. Finally, there is our organization called Proactive Integrity Associates LLC, which is forensic auditing for failed projects, where we‚are called in to do the audit of construction costs.
LINK TO FULL INTERVIEW on page 30 at the MAY 2013 MORTGAGE OBSERVER
Will NYC truly embrace Ferry Transit? (Gotham Gazette)
by Cody Lyon
NEW YORK — Nearly six months after Superstorm Sandy paralyzed subways and buses across the city, water transit advocates and politicians are saying it is time to expand ferry service into a robust, five-borough system that can operate in good times and after disasters.
They also see it as a means for providing affordable public transit to areas underserved by existing transit infrastructure — including, for example, the Rockaways, where the subway linking the peninsula was taken out of commission by the storm and a new ferry service was started up to connect the isolated community to Manhattan.
Yet, as policymakers look to expand ferry service, they are reminded of similar efforts over the past 20 years that have drowned in costs. Around 30 regional ferry services have come and gone, despite the investment of close to $700 million in capital investments.
Today’s ferry system is balkanized, with about half a dozen private operators carrying passengers across the Hudson and East rivers, as well as other parts of the metro area. The Staten Island Ferry, which accounts for the largest share of waterway ridership, is run by the Department of Transportation.
What’s more American than being able to name your brand “gay” (UPSTART)/G train story/ MTA releases Open Data Plan (Gotham Gazette)
UPSTART- (Business Journals)
What’s more American than coffee shops and ice cream? The freedom to have a ‘gay’ brand
Bryan Petroff (l) and Douglas Quint (r) sit outside the East Village location of their Big Gay Ice Cream shop. Donny Tsang*************************************************************************
NEW YORK — New Yorkers love to complain about their subway system: It’s too slow, too expensive, too dirty. And, worst of all, it’s too difficult to understand why.
That part — the why — is gradually being answered as the Metropolitan Transportation Authority embraces and promotes the public dissemination of the massive amounts of data that the agency generates on everything from train delays to its budget.
A group that works to keep the MTA accountable is set to release findings on Tuesday from a long-term study titled “The MTA in the Age of Big Data,” which looks at the state of the agency’s efforts to make data accessible to the public.
Butt Of Jokes G Train Gets Some Serious Attention
by Cody Lyon, Mar 04, 2013
NEW YORK — It was once known as the venerable train to the 1939 New York World’s Fair and was a critical transit artery for workers at industrial plants churning out materials for World War II.
Today the G train is the object of jokes and rants each day, both for its small number of cars and its spotty service.
“It’s a wild card as far as when I’ll get to work or back home,” said freelance theater director and Greenpoint resident Josh Hecht, who takes the G train daily and says he leaves home an extra twenty minutes or so early to get to work appointments.
A number of factors are coming together to bring change to the long-neglected G train, which has seen ridership grow because of the popularity of neighborhoods served by the subway line, including fashionable Williamsburg, Greenpoint, Fort Green, Clinton Hill and Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn.
The Metropolitan Transportation Agency, in response to calls from state lawmakers and a new transit advocacy organization for improvements like increased frequency of trains and communication with riders on the line, has announced that it will do a so-called “full line review” of the line by June. That review could result in major upgrades to one of the city’s most neglected lines.
NYC Bike Share delay Investigation-.(GOTHAM GAZETTE) Links to KUT RADIO appearancesRAD
BY CODY LYON
NEW YORK — The latest delay of the city’s bike share program is being blamed on damage caused to equipment by the floodwaters of Superstorm Sandy.
The bike share will now launch in May 2013, with 5,500 bikes instead of 10,000 as initially planned, the city’s Department of Transportation said in a news release Friday. The bikes will now roll out first “in the densest and most geographically contiguous parts of the service area” of Manhattan and Brooklyn.
Citi Bike Share, as it is known, failed to launch this past summer as expected because of software glitches.
CODY LYON’S AUDIO SAMPLES
Oil Spill doesn’t stop Gulf Entrepreneurs (from UPSTART- bizJournals) SAVING GULF SEAFOOD- Wine Enthusiast -History of Southern Accents
Dana Taylor, along with her husband Jason, had plans to open a seafood processing plant before the Deepwater Horizon explosion. The oil spill may have delayed their plans, but today they operate a successful business that depends on the Gulf of Mexico. Jason TaylorSome Southerners work to erase accent as others drawl with pride
NEW YORK — On his first trip to New York, Mississippi Delta native Will McKee was invited to a small party for a performer he had been publicizing in the South. Most of the attendees were show business
insiders from New York and Los Angeles.
Aware that it might draw unwanted attention, McKee tried to tone down his Southern accent.
But after a few bourbons, McKee, a marketing director in Birmingham, says he sounded more like a blend of Rhett Butler and Thurston Howell III from “Gilligan’s Island.”
- Making Mistakes w AdWordsThis Free Tool Will Tell You. Grade Your AdWords Account Free.www.WordStream.com
A man from Los Angeles took notice of McKee’s Southern roots.
“I just love how many syllables you can put in a little ol’ word like Bur-min-ha-am,” McKee recalled the man saying.
To that, McKee demonstrated how many syllables he needed to insult the man, using what is for most people a monosyllabic word that refers to a donkey.
The tense exchange was an example of a common clash between Southerners and non-Southerners over an accent that connotes a quaint gentility to some and a lack of sophistication to others.
New York gets Schooled (The Real Deal) Small Banks at Risk/ Trouble with TALF (GlobeSt.com)
New York Developers Incorporating Schools- From THE REAL DEAL
October 01, 2012
By Cody Lyon
In densely populated New York City, crowded neighborhood schools and a shortage of development sites are two sides of the same coin. So it’s not surprising that an increasing number of private developers are incorporating schools into their projects. And in many cases, they receive direct financial benefits to do so — from tax breaks to permission to construct larger buildings. There are also intangible benefits for developers and for the city, like winning support for projects from community opponents.
Small Banks at Greater Risk from CRE mortgages
- CODY LYON…globeSt.com (ALM)
This past September, it was becoming increasingly clear that smaller banks would suffer greater hardship as more commercial real estate mortgages started coming home to roost…by Cody Lyon
NEW YORK CITY-Commercial mortgage defaults, which are projected to reach unprecedented levels in 2011, pose an even greater risk for smaller, regional lenders than the nations more high-profile large banks. So says Dr. Sam Chandan, president of Real Estate Econometrics.”If you look across the banking system, commercial mortgage loans represent about 14% of banks net loans and leases,” Chandan tells GlobeSt.com. However, he says, banks that have assets of $10 billion or more typically see a less than 10% exposure rate to commercial real estate. On the other hand,.
NEW YORK CITY-Commercial mortgage defaults, which are projected to reach unprecedented levels in 2011, pose an even greater risk for smaller, regional lenders than the nations more high-profile large banks. So says Dr. Sam Chandan, president of Real Estate Econometrics.”If you look across the banking system, commercial mortgage loans represent about 14% of banks net loans and leases,” Chandan tells GlobeSt.com. However, he says, banks that have assets of $10 billion or more typically see a less than 10% exposure rate to commercial real estate. On the other hand,.
Trouble with TALF and the CMBS extension?
By Cody Lyon, on May 6th, 2009
EXCERPT from globeSt.com story
…Pleas for increased liquidity have been coming in loud and clear from the commercial real estate community for several months now as banks, hard hit by the economic downturn, have virtually frozen lending. According to the Fed’s Senior Loan Officer Opinion Survey for April, 66% of domestic banks reported tightening commercial real estate lending standards in the first calendar quarter.
Dimming hopes of future relaxing of standards is a growing lack of faith by banks in the quality of commercial mortgage quality. Standard & Poor’s recently placed $100 billion of CMBS issued from 2004 to 2008 on negative watch. Fitch Ratings followed suit with $18 billion of CMBS issued between 2006 and 2008. “We have numbers showing that more than 90% of domestic banks think the commercial mortgage quality is going to deteriorate, with 26% of those saying it’s going to deteriorate substantially,” says Chandan.
Raising the cash flow alarm volume higher, the RER says that over the next few years, the commercial real estate industry faces a liquidity crisis of mammoth proportions. Of the $6.7 trillion of assets compromising the greater commercial real estate market, around $3.5 trillion is debt. Around $10.7 billion worth of CMBS loans are currently delinquent or have defaulted, according to data from the Commercial Mortgage Securities Assoc.
The RER says that because most real estate mortgages have maturities between five and 10 years, the average annual amount of maturing loans beginning in 2009 is most likely somewhere between $300 billion and $600 billion. Put another way, the maturing debt that the real estate sector will see between 2010 and 2012 will total around $1.4 trillion.
