The coming commercial real estate crash that may never happen

Only two months ago, SL Green & Co. chief executive Marc Holliday was sounding happy. The head of New York’s biggest commercial landlord firm told Wall Street analysts that traffic to the company’s buildings was picking up, and more than 1 million square feet of space was either recently leased or in negotiations. The company’s debt was down, it had finished the structure for its 1 Madison Avenue tower in Manhattan, and local officials had just completed an extension of commuter rail service from Long Island to Green’s flagship tower near Grand Central Station.

“We are full guns blazing,” Holliday said on the quarterly earnings call, with workers…