Andrew MacArthur‘s Brooksville Company and Rockpoint Group are in contract to buy Starrett City for $850 million from a group of owners including President Trump.
The deal with the seller, Starrett City Associates, for the massive Brooklyn rental complex is subject to approval from the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development as well as state housing officials, the New York Times reported.
The sale raises potential conflicts of interest for Trump, who owns a 4 percent stake in the complex and stands to take in about $14 million after taxes and expenses. (The Trump family all together own about 16 percent of the complex.)
“The president is on both sides of the negotiation — he oversees the government entity providing taxpayer funds and he pockets some of that money himself,” Representatives Hakeem Jeffries and Elijah E. Cummings wrote in a letter in July to the trust that holds Trump’s interests and to HUD Secretary Ben Carson.
Andrew MacArthur
MacArthur, a former CWCapital Asset Management executive who led the $5.3 billion sale of Stuyvesant Town-Peter Cooper Village in 2015, launched his own investment firm Brooksville last year. Brooksville is also a minority partner with Rockpoint on two adjacent rental buildings at 63 and 67 Wall Street in the Financial District, and a management consultant for Blackstone Group’s Kips Bay Court complex.
MacArthur told the newspaper his company and Rockpoint were “committed to preserving the original vision of the complex as stable, quality affordable housing.”
Starrett City is the largest federally subsidized housing complex in the country, spanning 145 acres in Brooklyn with 5,881 apartments in 46 buildings.
Cushman & Wakefield’s Doug Harmon, who worked with MacArthur on the sale of Stuvyesant Town, is representing Starrett City Associates in the deal. [NYT] – Rich Bockmann