Maybe they accidentally came to the wrong room this morning in NYC, but this was the remarkable cast of celebrities we were proud to host for our Bisnow event on The Future of Times Square and the Far West Side: World Trade Center owner Larry Silverstein, with mic, and from left, New York retail king Robert Futterman, Related Companies Hudson Yards chief Jay Cross, CBRE Global Head of Brokerage Steve Siegel, Proskauer Real Estate leader Ron Sernau, SJP founder Steve Pozyck, and, moderating for us, former Cushman & Wakefield CEO Bruce Mosler. Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer opened the program. They agreed office leasing, retail, and, yes, even building are pretty much on fire again in the Big Apple.

We held the event on the vacant 34th floor of Steve Posycki?s new1.1 million SF tower at the corner of Eighth and 42nd, which we snapped a couple hours ago, right next to the ?new? New York Times Building. It's LEED Gold with floor-to-ceiling windows, state-of-the art air filtration, and the rest. Top buildings no longer seem to be called trophies in the Big Apple—the new nomenclature (to judge from marketing brochures) seems to be: ?iconic.?  

400 brokers and others were riveted as Larry told how he started in the neighborhood by buying a whole city block in 1984 for $20 million, which most thought foolish. It was zoned single-story industrial; most people, he said, died before they ever made it to that area. But he said he was motivated by thinking what people needed was a ?bell cow?—a leader that others would eventually follow. Sure enough, lots of new buildings are rising west of Eighth Avenue.