Yitzhak Tessler and 1107 Broadway

Yitzhak Tessler, the 62-year-old CEO and president of Tessler Developments, spoke with The Real Deal in his first face-to-face interview since he started building in New York more than a decade ago.

The builder of projects such as 240 Park Avenue South decided to speak up, he said, to challenge the reporting surrounding 1107 Broadway, his failed condominium conversion of one of the International Toy Center buildings that became mired in the economic downturn and the Lehman Brothers Holdings bankruptcy. He was frustrated with the assertion that he defaulted on the Lehman Brothers loan, saying the story was more complicated. In the end, each side claimed the other owed it money.

In addition, Tessler answered questions about the Chetrit brothers, with whom he frequently partnered on deals, and his future development plans in Manhattan. [more]

Last year’s imaginative marketing of Soho Mews, an all but completed
residential development at 311 West Broadway, seems to belong to a
vanished world. Not only was Calvin Klein hired to design several of
the units, but brokers were traveling across Europe in hopes of getting
the locals to invest their almighty euros in the inflated, but to them
relatively inexpensive, Manhattan real estate market. Now, of course, Europeans are suffering at least as much as we are from
the economic downturn and the euro, though off its lows of a few months
ago, has declined steeply against the dollar, with fewer tourists
reaching our shores. In the meantime, Soho Mews, with 68 apartments and nine stories tall,
has reached completion — aside from a few finishing touches — and the
results possess an undeniable dignity. more

Soho Mews

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