Helmsley Spear Inc

Leona Helmsley has given control of the Helmsley-Spear Inc. real estate management company to two business associates of her late husband Harry, settling a 1995 lawsuit, a spokesman confirmed Friday. The associates, Alvin Schwartz and Irving Schneider, were longtime employees who filed suit charging that she owed them millions of dollars in back pay. They also claimed she forced the company into millions of dollars of debt.

Leona Helmsley has given control of the Helmsley-Spear Inc. real estate management company to two business associates of her late husband Harry, settling a 1995 lawsuit, a spokesman confirmed Friday. The associates, Alvin Schwartz and Irving Schneider, were longtime employees who filed suit charging that she owed them millions of dollars in back pay. They also claimed she forced the company into millions of dollars of debt.

Leona and Harry Helmsley emerged from a silver stretch limousine under slate-gray skies a little more than a week ago to be fingerprinted, photographed, booked and arraigned among drug dealers and thieves in the Manhattan criminal courthouse. Clad in a fire-truck-red coat-dress with blue velvet lapels, Leona Helmsley held her head high, linked arms with her husband and smiled at the mass of reporters outside the courthouse. Asked for comment, they replied only, "Good morning."

The EMPIRE STATE BUILDING in New York City will be bathed in yellow lights to honor the troops coming home from Operation Desert Storm. The 102-story building had been lit up in red, white and blue for the duration of the Gulf War. But now that it's over, the colors will be changed to yellow to honor to returning troops.

Glenborough Realty Trust of San Mateo bought LNR Newport Plaza, a 106,902-square-foot office building at 895 Dove St. in Newport Beach, from Lennar Partners for $26.5 million. The seller was represented by Gregg Herbert, Jeff Hanson, Mike Dorsey and Dave Kinney of Grubb & Ellis, along with Bill Smith of Lennar Partners. Steve Mooradian and Joe McKay of Lee & Associates represented the buyer.

Leona Helmsley, the imperious Manhattan hotel magnate who was derided as "the Queen of Mean" in the late 1980s when she was on trial for income tax evasion and was deemed the woman New Yorkers most loved to hate, died Monday at her summer home in Greenwich, Conn. She was 87. Helmsley, whose $2.5-billion personal fortune last year had her tied as No. 117 on the Forbes list of 400 richest Americans, died of heart failure, said her publicist, Howard Rubenstein.