By Tom Acitelli 8/09/11 2:56pm

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The Chelsea: Everybody in.

Chetrit’s $85 M. Chelsea Hotel Loan; His Junior Partner’s Housing Violations

Real estate investor Joseph Chetrit closed on his nearly $80 million Chelsea Hotel buy early last week, and now information has trickled out about how he and junior partner Clipper Equities paid for it.

They got an $85 million, 36-month loan from Paris-based banking behemoth Natixis. The loan has a 12-month repayment extension option, and was brokered for the borrowers by Meridian’s Ronnie Levine and Aaron Birnbaum. (Real Estate Weekly has more news on the loan.)

Clipper, incidentally, was the controversial would-be buyer of the massive affordable-housing complex in Brooklyn, Starrett City, offering $1.3 billion in 2007. Read More

By Tom Acitelli 8/09/11 8:49am

The Transom

Something is happening, but we don't (fully) know what it is...

Chelsea Hotel Passover: A Lot More Than Four Questions as Chetrit Marks the Doors

Shortly before noon last Thursday, a woman with a German accent stepped to the front desk of the Chelsea Hotel, and demanded in clipped English her reservation.

“The hotel’s closed,” said a distracted employee behind the desk. He was holding a severance letter presented earlier by the hotel’s new owner, The Chetrit Group, led by the enigmatic real estate investor Joseph Chetrit, whose holdings include the Willis Tower in Chicago, North America’s tallest building, and over 4.9 million square feet of commercial space in New York City.

“Closed? I have a reservation, please,” the woman said.

She got no answer. Sensing something, she tried again.

“Is this the InterContinental?” Read More

By Tom Acitelli 8/02/11 6:15pm

Inn Demand

Twilight.

Era Ends as Joseph Chetrit Closes on Chelsea Hotel Buy

The elusive Joseph Chetrit has closed on his $80 million deal to buy the Chelsea Hotel. According to The Real Deal, he and his representatives finalized things at around 5:30 yesterday afternoon, ending speculation that the deal would fall through and that the Chelsea would survive as it always has for the last century or so: as the craziest inn you could imagine, even by New York standards. Read More

By Tom Acitelli 7/05/11 7:04pm

Building Expectations

The Chelsea.

Joseph Chetrit, the Most Mysterious Big Shot in New York Real Estate

One summer Friday in 1994, Ron Cohen, one of the top commercial brokers in New York City, picked up the phone in his office at the old Insignia/ESG, a precursor to today’s mega-brokerage CB Richard Ellis. A man named Joseph Chetrit was cold-calling him about a 16-story office building at 19 West 44th Street that Mr. Cohen’s client was selling.

“Sorry,” Mr. Cohen said. “We don’t work with people we don’t know.”

He hung up and went back to work.

Minutes later, three men walked into Mr. Cohen’s office. They were Joseph Chetrit, his father Simon, and his brother Jacques.

“Well, now you know us,” Joseph said matter-of-factly. Read More

By Tom Acitelli 6/27/11 9:01am

Building Expectations

How the Lehman-ade gets made.

Lehman Brothers Unloads 200 Fifth to JPMorgan in $700 M. Deal

As expected (we noted last week this would likely happen and soon), Lehman Brothers has agreed to unload its majority stake in the old Toy Building at 200 Fifth Avenue in a deal that values it at about $700 million. It is one of the biggest building sales of 2011 so far, and one of the most significant moves by the croaked investment bank’s holding company in its campaign to liquidate its real estate. The buyer is a wing of JPMorgan. Read More

By Laura Kusisto 6/08/11 11:55am

Trading Spaces

620 Sixth Avenue.

Bed Bath & Beyond Building on the Block; Could Fetch $500 M., Sources Say

Hot on the heels of RXR Realty’s purchase of the Starrett-Lehigh Building for $900 million and the sale of 111 Eighth Avenue to Google for $1.8 billion, Bed Bath & Beyond’s building is on the block.

A partnership of Joseph Chetrit and Yair Levy, spearheaded by Charles Dayan from Bonjour Capital, bought the building for $289.8 million in 2005, according to city records. But with the trendy Chelsea office market enjoying a boom, driven in no small part by the tech bubble, the building could sell for around $500 million, according to some sources. Read More

By Dana Rubinstein 10/13/09 7:10pm

How Keen Is Manhattan Valley?

An unexpected alliance between a powerful developer and a neighborhood retirement home is causing an uproar in the Manhattan Valley section of the famously ornery Upper West Side.

Enigmatic developer Joseph Chetrit and Jewish Home Lifecare, which has a campus at 120 West 106th Street, between Amsterdam and Columbus avenues, have decided to swap properties. Read More

By Dana Rubinstein 8/04/09 2:58pm

Top Nonprofit Looks to Leave Silverstein for Chetrit

Poor Larry Silverstein. First the World Trade Center debacle. Now this.

The Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, which Silverstein Properties’ Web site touts as a marquee tenant at the nonprofit-heavy Art Deco masterpiece of a building at 120 Wall Street, has a lease out with a competing landlord.

The foundation, which specializes in funding research to Read More