Eastdil’s Douglas Harmon and the Hotel Chelsea

The famous Hotel Chelsea — longtime haunt of luminaries like Bob Dylan, Charles Bukowski, and Janis Joplin — has been sold.
Secretive real estate investor Joseph Chetrit reportedly signed a contract several months ago to purchase the iconic hotel from its longtime owners for more than $80 million, in a deal brokered by Eastdil Secured’s Douglas Harmon. But amidst a furor yesterday prompted by the abrupt removal of guests from the hotel, longtime residents began to think the deal would not come to fruition. [more]

Jones Lang LaSalle’s expanding investment sales team in the firm’s New York City Capital Markets group has picked up four more brokers: Eric Herlands, Jason Gold, Joseph Sitt and Stephen Shapiro. The firm announced today that the new hires will be working for the high-profile team of Richard Baxter, Jon Caplan, Ron Cohen and Scott Latham, who defected from Cushman & Wakefield to JLL last year in a deal sources said was valued at around $1 million per man. As The Real Deal reported last month, though, the pricey new team has yet to hit its stride, having done only around $200 million in property sales for JLL since its arrival. TRD [more]

From left: Garret Thelander and Paul Massey

Massey Knakal Realty Services has tapped Anglo Irish Bank executive Garrett Thelander, who helped open the New York office of the troubled lender and grow its staff to 35, to lead its new mortgage division, it was expected to be announced today.

Thelander, 55, is once again charged with starting a new office, this time as a managing director for Massey Knakal, to hire brokers and develop the new arm, Paul Massey, company CEO, told The Real Deal.

The hiring of the bank executive comes two weeks after Massey Knakal launched a retail brokerage division, bringing in long-time retail agent Benjamin Fox for that job. At the same time, the firm has had significant defections, including a top producer for the firm, Shimon Shkury, who left with his team to open the new firm Ariel Property Advisors. [more]

From left: Yair Levy, Eastdil’s Doug Harmon and 101 West 87th Street

Commercial and residential landlord Fisher Brothers placed a $48 million bid in bankruptcy court to buy the Upper West Side apartment building Park Columbus where embattled developer Yair Levy failed in his effort to convert the rental property to condominiums. The 95-unit apartment building at 101 West 87th Street at Columbus Avenue, constructed by the Related Companies in the 1980s, is being sold in Manhattan federal bankruptcy court.

An entity called 101W 87th LLC made the so-called stalking horse bid of $48 million, Manhattan federal bankruptcy court records show. A source who declined to be identified but has knowledge of the deal said Fisher Brothers, the long-time real estate family, controlled the bidding entity. The property has loans valued at $52.6 million, city records show. [more]

Douglas Harmon,senior managing director at Eastdil, and Superior Ink

One of the city’s top brokers and a senior managing director at real estate banking firm Eastdil Secured, Douglas Harmon, bought an apartment at the Related Companies’ Superior Ink development in the West Village for $6.95 million. Harmon has brokered some of highest-profile transactions in New York City, including the Apthorp apartment building on the Upper West Side for $426 million in 2007, and 1211 Sixth Avenue for $1.5 billion in 2006. Harmon went into contract on the purchase of the three-bedroom unit at 400 West 12th Street in November 2007, and closed March 3, city property records published today show. A call to a spokesperson for Eastdil was not immediately returned. Also in the Superior Ink, the Broadway-producer son of Vornado Realty Trust’s chairman Steven Roth, Jordan Roth, bought a $13.1 million apartment in Superior Ink, the Observer reported last month. [more]

444 Madison Avenue (source: PropertyShark)

From the January issue: New York City’s top commercial brokerages have jockeyed for market
share over the past few years, but in a surprise upset, Eastdil Secured
has emerged on top. According to an analysis by The Real Deal — which was based
on data provided by Real Capital Analytics for Manhattan commercial
transactions of $5 million and above — the firm had more than $15
billion in sales from the first quarter of 2007 through the third
quarter of 2009. CB Richard Ellis ranked second with more than $12 billion in
building sales, while Cushman & Wakefield ranked third with more
than $10 billion, according to the RCA data.
But Eastdil’s ranking is largely due to a unique set of circumstances:
The firm handled the $7 billion sale of Equity Office Properties’
Midtown portfolio to Macklowe Properties in 2007. Without that deal,
Eastdil would have slid to third place. [more]