Witkoff talks Toy Center acquisition at real estate panel

The third annual GreenPearl New York event titled “Beyond Distress” was attended by over 450 real estate professionals. Witkoff Group Chairman Steve Witkoff delivered the keynote address, focusing on his acquisition of the International Toy Center at 1107 Broadway from Lehman Holdings. Mark Gorton, founder of Tower Research Capital, and the originator of Limewire — an early file-sharing program that resembled Napster — discussed the impact closing parts of Times Square to automobiles has had on businesses and the environment.

The event’s first panel, “Battlefield for New York,” included an impressive list of real estate experts (see photo above), including Faith Hope Consolo, chairman of the retail group at Prudential Douglas Elliman.

Afterwards, Ryan Slack, the CEO of GreenPearlEvents, confided that attendance was down from the first year’s event — “The Distressed Real Estate Summit” — which attracted over 750 attendees. He speculated that the difference is probably due to the fact that a lot of those individuals are either out of the industry or have realized that the deals for forty cents on the dollar just never materialized. — Marc Becker