Charles Dayan’s Bonjour Capital is buying the Hamilton, a 265-unit Upper East Side rental, for $150 million from Glenwood Management, sources told The Real Deal. What makes the deal unusual is it marks an incredibly rare sale for Glenwood, which is notorious for almost never selling.
The deal for 1735 York Avenue is set to close Wednesday, sources said. Bonjour will change the name of the 37-story, 280,000-square-foot building to the “Serrano” and is set to give it a $20 million renovation.
It’s unclear which brokers were involved in the deal. Sources for Bonjour and Glenwood couldn’t immediately be reached for comment.
In January, Bonjour sold the Crescent Club, a 130-unit Long Island City rental building, for $97 million to Weiss Realty. Dayan’s brother, Avi Ben-Dayan, runs real estate investment firm Glory Capital.
Glenwood was founded by Leonard Litwin in 1961, and is one of the biggest rental landlords in the city, with at least 33 buildings and 8,799 units, according to a TRData of city property records. The bulk of its holdings are concentrated on thew Upper East Side, and it has a reputation of holding on to properties — since 2005, it has only made three sales, Real Capital Analytics data show.
Since last year, Glenwood has been in the spotlight after it emerged the firm was at the center of corruption scandals involving two of the state’s most prominent politicians, former Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver and former Senate Majority Leader Dean Skelos.