Eliot Spitzer sold another property built by his late father in the 1970s as he continues to forge ahead with a new generation of developments.
Spitzer’s family firm, Spitzer Enterprises, sold the 147-unit rental building at 220 East 72nd Street on the Upper East Side to a partnership led by the Dermot Company for $160 million, sources told The Real Deal.
“The Spitzer family built an incredible building and did an impressive job maintaining it for many years,” said Dermot partner and managing director Andrew Levison, who teamed up with USAA Real Estate and the Dutch pension fund PGGM on the purchase.
Levison added that the partners plan to modernize and upgrade the building. A spokesperson for Spitzer declined to comment on the sale.
The 28-story doorman building sits in the Lenox Hill section between Second and Third avenues, an area that’s heavily saturated with condos and co-ops.
Helen Hwang of Meridian Capital Group, who led the team that marketed the property for Spitzer in the off-market deal, said the building’s spacious layouts, excellent views and proximity to the new Second Avenue subway give it advantages that are “virtually impossible to replicate.”
Dermot and its partners financed the purchase with a loan from HSBC.
Bernard Spitzer developed the beige-brick building in 1975 as part of a portfolio of luxury apartment buildings he developed on the Upper East Side. Since taking over the family firm a few years ago prior to Bernard’s death in 2014 at the age of 90, Spitzer has been selling off several of the firm’s older assets to help finance a new crop of developments.
He sold a block of rental apartments at the Corinthian in Murray Hill in 2014 for $147 million, and the next year sold the famed Crown Building for $1.78 billion to Jeff Sutton and General Growth Properties.
Spitzer last year launched leasing at his first ground-up development since taking over the company: the three-building, 857-unit rental complex on the Williamsburg waterfront at 420 Kent Avenue.
He’s also teaming up with the Related Companies to develop a mixed-use project in the Hudson Yards neighborhood that will include a senior housing component.
The Dermot Company, meanwhile, partnered with PGGM last year to buy the 503-unit rental building at 101 West End Avenue for $416 million. The two also own the 616-unit 21 West End Avenue together.
Meridian’s Karen Wiedenmann, Brian Szczapa, Yasmin Kheradpey and Ernie Nichols worked on the team alongside Hwang that sold the building for Spitzer. A Meridian team led by Rael Gervis negotiated the financing for the buyers.