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Highgate Hotels founder buys UES townhouse for $22.5M
Interior designer Juan Pablo Molyneux bought it for just $3.1M in 1990
Juan Pablo Molyneux designs interiors for a living, but he apparently knows something about buy-and-hold investing too.
Molyneux, who once designed a 40,000-square-foot palace for Qatari Sheikh Mohamed Bin Suhaum Al-Thani, sold his Upper East Side townhouse to Highgate Hotels co-founder Mahmood Khimji for $22.5 million, an impressive $19.4 million over the 1990 purchase price.
The seven-story, six-bedroom, 8,700-square-foot limestone house, at 29 East 69th Street, features a library, a gym, an elevator, and five outdoor spaces including a 1,600 Square Foot Roof Terrace with a “therapeutic pool.” It was featured in Harper’s Bazaar last year.
Molyneux originally placed it on the market in 2012, asking $48 million.
Paula Del Nunzio had the listing.
The buyer, Khimji, founded Highgate Hotels, a hospitality investment firm, in 1988 with his brother Mehdi. As of last fall, it managed 60 hotels and 20,000 rooms.
The company recently sold its stake in the 689-key Manhattan at Times Square Hotel, which it owned along with Rockpoint and Goldman Sachs. The buyer in that deal was Qatari investment firm Al Rayyan Tourism and Investment, a subsidiary of Al Faisal Holdings. [NYP] – Ariel Stulberg