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    Disney and DeSantis Reach Agreement, Ending Protracted Fight

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    The deal locks in a 15-year expansion plan for Disney World and clears a path for Disney to restart political donations in Florida.Disney and Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida have finally ended their feud, clearing the way for $17 billion in planned development at Walt Disney World near Orlando.On Wednesday night, the Central Florida Tourism Oversight District — an entity that Mr. DeSantis took over in 2022, ending 55 years of Disney control and sparking multiple lawsuits — gave the company a big part of what it wanted all along: a locked-in, long-term plan for expanding Disney World. At least for the next 15 years, the length of the new agreement, Disney can develop the resort without worrying about interference by Florida politicians.Put bluntly, state leaders can no longer use growth at the 25,000-acre resort as a political weapon, as Mr. DeSantis did two years ago after Disney said it would fight to repeal a state education law that opponents called anti-gay.Jeff Vahle, the president of Disney World, said in a statement that the agreement would support “the growth of this global destination, fueling the Florida economy.” It gives Disney the ability to build a fifth theme park, add three small parks, expand retail and office space and build 14,000 hotel rooms, for a resort total of nearly 54,000.Disney has earmarked $17 billion to expand the complex over the next decade, growth it has said will create an estimated 13,000 jobs.The district noted that, under the agreement, Disney is obligated to spend at least $8 billion. The company also must expand an affordable housing initiative and carry out a “buy local initiative,” with at least 50 percent of its total spending in expanding Disney World going to Florida businesses.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Adam Neumann Gives Up on Buying Back WeWork

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      The co-founder of the shared-office company, who stepped down under pressure before the firm went bankrupt, announced an audacious takeover bid earlier this year.Adam Neumann has officially admitted defeat in his quest to buy back WeWork, ending his bid to acquire the co-working company that he helped found in 2010 and built into a global enterprise valued at $47 billion before it fell into bankruptcy last year.“For several months, we tried to work constructively with WeWork to create a strategy that would allow it to thrive,” Mr. Neumann said in a statement to the DealBook newsletter. “Instead, the company looks to be emerging from bankruptcy with a plan that appears unrealistic and unlikely to succeed.”The writing was on the wall for weeks. Mr. Neumann stepped down as WeWork’s chief executive in 2019 under pressure from directors and investors, after the company failed to go public amid questions about its business model and corporate governance. It marked a stunning fall for Mr. Neumann, the company’s charismatic frontman.But in February, DealBook reported that Mr. Neumann was planning an audacious move to buy back the company.His new real estate company, Flow, which is backed by Andreessen Horowitz, the venture capital firm, offered more than $500 million. The plan was to buy WeWork or its assets, and inject bankruptcy financing to keep it afloat.But WeWork found a different lifeline. A U.S. bankruptcy judge last month approved a restructuring deal that essentially wiped out $4 billion in company debt. It also included $450 million in new funding from SoftBank, the Japanese technology investor that has backed WeWork from its early days, enabling it to exit Chapter 11 bankruptcy.WeWork has been busy renegotiating leases in an effort to shed $11 billion in rent obligations. The rise of hybrid work since the coronavirus pandemic has hit the commercial real estate sector hard. A surge in vacancies has helped companies like WeWork rework deals with landlords, but has also cast doubts over the growth potential of the shared-office business model. More

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      Zack Norman, Actor Who Juggled Multiple Professions, Dies at 83

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      Best known for movies like “Romancing the Stone,” he also made a mark as a producer, a real estate developer and the butt of a Generation X-friendly television gag.Zack Norman, who made his mark as an actor in films like “Romancing the Stone” and “Cadillac Man” and with appearances on television shows like “The A-Team” and “The Nanny” — and who, as a producer, also became known for a star-crossed movie that became a running punchline on the show “Mystery Science Theater 3000” — died on April 28 in Burbank, Calif. He was 83.The cause of his death, at a hospital, was bilateral pneumonia related to the coronavirus, his daughter Lori Zuker Briller said.While best known for scene-stealing appearances as a supporting player, Mr. Norman was always more than a character actor. He was also a painter, a real estate developer and an art collector who in the 1980s mingled with the likes of Andy Warhol and Jean-Michel Basquiat.Mr. Norman had a memorably menacing turn alongside Danny DeVito in the hit 1984 movie “Romancing the Stone.”20th Century Fox/Everett CollectionStarting in the early 1970s, Mr. Norman tallied nearly 40 movie and television acting credits. He had a memorably menacing turn as Danny DeVito’s crocodile-tending antiquities-smuggler sidekick in “Romancing the Stone,” Robert Zemeckis’s 1984 adventure comedy starring Kathleen Turner and Michael Douglas.He was abundantly familiar to fans of the indie director Henry Jaglom, appearing in many of Mr. Jaglom’s films, including “Sitting Ducks” (1980), a comedy in which he was one of two dimwitted hoods who steal from a gambling syndicate, and “Hollywood Dreams” (2006), in which he played a kindly film producer who looks after a fame-obsessed starlet (Tanna Frederick).We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Starwood REIT, Facing a Possible Cash Crunch, Limits Withdrawals

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      Starwood Real Estate Income Trust is restricting what investors can redeem rather than sell its properties to raise cash.A giant real estate fund managed by the company of the billionaire investor Barry Sternlicht is limiting the amount of money that investors can redeem, in an attempt to fend off a potential cash crunch as high interest rates pummel the market for commercial properties like office buildings.Starwood Real Estate Income Trust, which manages about $10 billion and is one of the largest real estate investment trusts around, said on Thursday that it would buy back only 1 percent of the value of the fund’s assets every quarter, down from 5 percent earlier.Starwood said that it had chosen to tighten the limit because it was facing more withdrawals than it could meet with its cash on hand, and that it was a better option than raising money by selling properties at discounted prices. The value of commercial properties has fallen — hit both by lower occupancy since the coronavirus pandemic and by high interest rates that make real estate less affordable.In a letter to shareholders, Mr. Sternlicht, who leads the Starwood Capital Group, and Sean Harris, the chief executive of Starwood’s REIT, said: “We cannot recommend being an aggressive seller of real estate assets today given what we believe to be a near-bottom market with limited transaction volumes, and our belief that the real estate markets will improve.”Any such gates tend to spook investors.“This will have a negative effect on fund-raising,” said Kevin Gannon, chief executive of the investment bank Robert A. Stanger & Company, which follows the REIT market. “I think it will give people more pause.” He added that “no one anticipated that redemptions would stay this big this long.”Real estate investment trusts buy and own commercial or industrial properties and generate dividends for investors. They are typically publicly traded entities. But the Starwood REIT and one created by the private equity behemoth Blackstone are privately held and instead sold by financial advisers, mostly to individual investors. Some churn is normal in the business, as investors make decisions about what to buy and sell.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Trump May Owe $100 Million From Double-Dip Tax Breaks, Audit Shows

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      Former President Donald J. Trump used a dubious accounting maneuver to claim improper tax breaks from his troubled Chicago tower, according to an Internal Revenue Service inquiry uncovered by The New York Times and ProPublica. Losing a yearslong audit battle over the claim could mean a tax bill of more than $100 million.The 92-story, glass-sheathed skyscraper along the Chicago River is the tallest and, at least for now, the last major construction project by Mr. Trump. Through a combination of cost overruns and the bad luck of opening in the teeth of the Great Recession, it was also a vast money loser.But when Mr. Trump sought to reap tax benefits from his losses, the I.R.S. has argued, he went too far and in effect wrote off the same losses twice.The first write-off came on Mr. Trump’s tax return for 2008. With sales lagging far behind projections, he claimed that his investment in the condo-hotel tower met the tax code definition of “worthless,” because his debt on the project meant he would never see a profit. That move resulted in Mr. Trump reporting losses as high as $651 million for the year, The Times and ProPublica found.There is no indication the I.R.S. challenged that initial claim, though that lack of scrutiny surprised tax experts consulted for this article. But in 2010, Mr. Trump and his tax advisers sought to extract further benefits from the Chicago project, executing a maneuver that would draw years of inquiry from the I.R.S. First, he shifted the company that owned the tower into a new partnership. Because he controlled both companies, it was like moving coins from one pocket to another. Then he used the shift as justification to declare $168 million in additional losses over the next decade.The issues around Mr. Trump’s case were novel enough that, during his presidency, the I.R.S. undertook a high-level legal review before pursuing it. The Times and ProPublica, in consultation with tax experts, calculated that the revision sought by the I.R.S. would create a new tax bill of more than $100 million, plus interest and potential penalties.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      China’s First Quarter Results Show Growth Propelled by Its Factories

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      China’s big bet on manufacturing helped to counteract its housing slowdown in the first three months of the year, but other countries are worried about a flood of Chinese goods.The Chinese economy grew more than expected in the first three months of the year, new data shows, as China built more factories and exported huge amounts of goods to counter a severe real estate crisis and sluggish spending at home.To stimulate growth, China, the world’s second-largest economy, turned to a familiar tactic: investing heavily in its manufacturing sector, including a binge of new factories that have helped to propel sales around the world of solar panels, electric cars and other products. But China’s bet on exports has worried many foreign countries and companies. They fear that a flood of Chinese shipments to distant markets may undermine their manufacturing industries and lead to layoffs.On Tuesday, China’s National Bureau of Statistics said the economy grew 1.6 percent in the first quarter over the previous three months. When projected out for the entire year, the first-quarter data indicates that China’s economy was growing at an annual rate of about 6.6 percent.“The national economy made a good start,” said Sheng Laiyun, deputy director of the statistics bureau, while cautioning that “the foundation for stable and sound economic growth is not solid yet.”Retail sales increased at a modest pace of 4.7 percent compared with the first three months of last year, and were particularly weak in March. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Hudson Yards ‘Vessel’ Sculpture Will Reopen With Netting After Suicides

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      The 150-foot-high tourist attraction, which closed in 2021, will be fitted with stop people from jumping.Nearly three years after a series of suicides shut down the Vessel, the 150-foot-tall centerpiece of the Hudson Yards complex in Manhattan, the project’s developer said on Friday that it would reopen this year with new safety measures.The beehive-shaped sculpture, with a labyrinth of about 2,500 steps and 80 landings, opened in 2019, along with much of the rest of Hudson Yards, a gleaming development in Midtown West. Not long after, in February 2020, a 19-year-old, Peter DeSalvo III, died by suicide there.Over the next year and a half, three others died by suicide there as well, including a 14-year-old boy in 2021, prompting the developers to close off access to the stairs.The attraction will reopen once “floor-to-ceiling steel mesh” has been installed on several staircases, said Kathleen Corless, a spokeswoman for Related Companies, the developer of Hudson Yards. The measure will preserve the “unique experience that has drawn millions of visitors from around the globe,” the company said in a statement.The reopening, first reported by The New York Post, will take place sometime this year.On Saturday morning, tourists craned their necks against the chilly wind to take in views of the massive, brassy art piece. Although it was still closed, a careful look at its third floor showed an initial section of the upcoming changes: black mesh, resembling a fish net.Simon Pierre, 37, a high school teacher visiting from Montreal, said it reminded him of factories in China where the owners installed nets after a wave of suicides. “It’s sad that it’s needed,” he said.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Can Minor League Baseball Survive Its Real Estate Problems?

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      Ed Willson has a jar filled with dirt sitting on his desk.For more than 40 years, Mr. Willson has been a fan of the minor league baseball team in Eugene, Ore., the Emeralds, and a season-ticket holder for 22 seasons. He was crushed when Civic Stadium, the longtime home of the team, burned to the ground in 2015. “It was a serious heartbreak,” Mr. Willson said.After the fire, Mr. Willson made a pilgrimage to the scorched diamond, where he filled a plastic bag with dirt from the pitcher’s mound that he considered sacred. He planned to give it to the team when it began construction on its new stadium.Nine years later, the dirt is still on Mr. Willson’s desk. The Emeralds are still without a permanent home. And there’s a risk that the team, after 69 seasons, may leave town altogether.Although the Emeralds (also known for their Sasquatch mascot, Sluggo) have survived wildfires, losing seasons, recessions, Major League Baseball’s 2020 reorganization of the minor leagues and Covid, they are a team without a ballpark.And the debate about the Emeralds’ fate — in the birthplace of Nike, no less — is a testament to the struggle for affordable, in-person sports to survive in the current Gilded Age.Nor are the Emeralds the only minor league baseball team that has reached a crisis point as a result of a ballpark problem. In 2020, Major League Baseball imposed new guidelines for its minor league stadiums. They include LED lighting, changing rooms for women, new fencing, expanded training facilities and a larger clubhouse. Those fixes are pricey.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More