🤖 AI firms rewriting Manhattan's office playbook
🔥 Distressed offices selling for 90%+ off
🏀 Kevin Durant buys 515-acre Six Flags site
🔧 Upcoming Workshops: Raising Capital from Large Real Estate LPs 

Data Viz of the Week: Where is Manufacturing Booming?

New data from the Economic Innovation Group paints a picture of where manufacturing is gaining — and shedding — jobs in the US.

Texas was the big winner with more than a third of all manufacturing job growth. And just four southeastern states (SC, GA, AL, and FL) together accounted for another 36%. The losers, on the other hand, were large northeastern, Rust Belt, and Pacific Northwest metros.

Upcoming Thesis Driven Courses & Workshops

•  April 15: Workshop: AI for Real Estate Lawyers (💻 Online): An interactive workshop for real estate attorneys, in-house counsel, paralegals, and legal teams exploring how AI is reshaping transactional practice—from due diligence to closing - $299

• April 17: Workshop: Raising Capital from Large Real Estate LPs (💻 Online): ​​A live, interactive workshop designed for real estate sponsors, fund managers, and capital raisers looking to access institutional-scale capital — including pensions, endowments, OCIO platforms, large family offices, and RIAs - $299

• April 23: Workshop: AI in Real Estate (💻 Online): ​​A three-hour interactive workshop for owners, operators, and developers exploring how to use AI in the real estate sector - $499

• April 29: Workshop: LinkedIn Strategy for GPs (💻 Online): ​​A live, practical workshop for real estate GPs, operators, and fund managers who want to use LinkedIn intentionally—as a capital formation tool, not a vanity channel - $299

Three Articles We Loved from Last Week

It’s not easy keeping up with everything. Here are three articles we loved from the past week that you may have missed:

1. (Bisnow) AI Companies Growing Their NYC Offices at Breakneck Speed AI firms leased 415,000 SF in Manhattan in Q1 alone, averaging 34,500 SF per deal — roughly double the pace of all of 2025. The headline number: Nvidia-backed cloud company Nscale signed a lease at $320/SF at One Vanderbilt, setting a new all-time Manhattan office rent record and marking the first time an AI company has held that distinction. The Grand Central submarket is now commanding trophy-floor rents north of $265/SF, with a sublease on One Vanderbilt's 73rd floor marketing at $350/SF. AI has gone from a leasing footnote to the defining demand driver of the 2026 office cycle.

2. (The Real Deal) Distressed Office Sales Are Accelerating in 2026 Through January and February, distressed office sales volume hit $808M — up nearly 25% year-over-year — as owners scramble to exit buildings at prices that would have been unthinkable a few years ago. Some of the discounts are staggering: 401 S. State St. in Chicago traded for $4M, just 6% of its $68.1M price in 2016, and the Denver Energy Center sold for $5.3M, roughly 3% of its $176M basis in 2013. There were more than 200 distressed office sales last year totaling $5.2B, per MSCI, and the pace is only picking up as stubborn rates, declining values, and hybrid work continue to grind.

3. (CoStar) Basketball Star Kevin Durant's Firm to Acquire, Redevelop Closed Six Flags Near DC Maryland native Kevin Durant's investment firm 35V, alongside Atlanta-based developer TPA Group, is acquiring the 515-acre former Six Flags America site in Bowie, MD — one of the largest land deals in the DC metro in years. The amusement park shut down in November 2025, and Prince George's County Executive Aisha Braveboy announced the deal on April 8 with plans to host community input sessions on the site's future. While specific redevelopment plans haven't been disclosed, the transaction signals growing institutional interest in large-scale mixed-use and entertainment-oriented land plays in fast-growing suburban corridors.

Developer of the Week: Rabsky Group

Rabsky Group secured a $765 million refinancing from JPMorgan Chase for its 625 Fulton Street development in Downtown Brooklyn — one of the largest multifamily loans thus far this year. 

The deal signals that institutional capital is still flowing to well-positioned large-scale multifamily projects even amid broader market uncertainty, and underscores Downtown Brooklyn's continued emergence as a premier residential development corridor. Rabsky also filed plans this week for 197 additional units in Bed-Stuy, showing aggressive expansion momentum.

You can read more about Rabsky Group on the Thesis Driven GP database here.

Investor of the Week: Crow Holdings

Crow Holdings is a Dallas-based real estate investment and development firm with roots dating back to 1948, operating today through two platforms: Crow Holdings Capital (CHC), which manages $20B in real estate assets within a broader $34B firm-level AUM, and Crow Holdings Development, which includes the nationally recognized Trammell Crow Residential multifamily platform. CHC launched its private equity real estate fund business in 1998 with a $281M inaugural fund and has since raised ten closed-end value-add vehicles under the Crow Holdings Realty Partners series, bringing total capital raised across all vintages to more than $15.6B.

The firm's most recent flagship, Fund X, closed in 2024 at $3.1B in equity commitments — a 35% increase over its $2.3B predecessor — with nearly $600M in co-invest secured alongside the primary fund for $3.7B in total investable equity. More than 70% of prior investors re-upped, joined by new allocators including sovereign wealth funds, global banks, insurance companies, and pension plans. Fund X targets value-add opportunities primarily in industrial and multifamily in high-growth U.S. markets, with 25%+ of capital already committed across 14 investments at the time of close. Beyond the core fund series, CHC invests in specialty sectors with institutional tailwinds — manufactured housing, self-storage, student housing, and convenience retail — and runs a senior and subordinate lending strategy with select originations and recapitalizations. On the development side, Trammell Crow Residential has built more than 292,000 multifamily units over 45+ years across 16 U.S. markets and recently expanded with new offices in Nashville and Phoenix, doubling down on Sun Belt growth.

Get more details on Crow Holdings, including team contacts, deal activity, and investment preferences, inside the CapitalStack database.

—Brad and Paul