Larry Gluck’s Stellar Management has finalized a plan to partner with tenant Erez Shternlicht and replace a loading dock in Gluck’s Meatpacking District office building at 450 West 15th Street with a prime retail storefront.

The retail addition, that will sit just west of luxury clothing retailer Jeffrey New York on West 14th Street between Ninth and 10th avenues, is part of a larger approximately $60 million sale and lease transaction Milk Studio’s Shternlicht executed in two separate deals including the sale of the neighboring Mobil gas station.

Shternlicht said the extremely complicated deals would unlock millions of dollars in value for the Stellar Management building and influence the area by adding retail on 14th Street all the way to 10th Avenue. [more]

Larry Gluck and Independence Plaza at 80 North Moore Street

Larry Gluck has struck a deal with Vornado Realty Trust to recapitalize his troubled Independence Plaza North apartment complex at 80 North Moore Street in Tribeca, sources told the Wall Street Journal. Vornado purchased $185 million in junior debt on the 1,300-unit property for $185 million, those sources said.

Gluck’s Stellar Management originally picked up the property in 2003, taking out $575 million in loans to renovate the apartments and convert them from middle-income housing to luxury rentals. Ultimately, the revenue from those rentals didn’t meet Gluck’s expectations, and earlier this year, the loan entered special servicing. There’s still some $400 million in debt that is maturing this fall. [more]

Larry Gluck and Independence Plaza at 80 North Moore Street

A federal judge has ruled that landlord Larry Gluck did not illegaly deregulate apartments at his 1,328-unit Tribeca complex Independence Plaza at 80 North Moore Street, according to Crain’s. Gluck had previously filed a notice of appeal after a state judge ruled last summer that he had illegally deregulated the units by removing them from rent regulation while still accepting J-51 tax breaks.

Gluck acquired the property, between Greenwich and West streets, in 2003 and soon after began the process of taking the development out of state rent-protection and the federal Mitchell-Lama program. [more]

Laurence Gluck and 111 Kent Avenue

Laurence Gluck’s Stellar Management has purchased the stalled Williamsburg condominium project at 111 Kent Avenue for $24.6 million and plans to revive the property as a 62-unit rental. According to Crain’s, Stellar partnered with Largo Investments in the acquisition from Garrison Investment Group, which paid $43 million to take it off the original developers’ hands this past November. The developers had defaulted on their $1.3 million loan two years ago after listing the condo units for between $575,000 and $1.1 million apiece. [more]

1140 Sixth Avenue and Laurence Gluck

It’s a good day for investors looking to pick up commercial property debt: in addition to the $75 million senior mortgage at 80 Broad Street that just came on the market, Crain’s reported that a $116 million senior loan at 1140 Sixth Avenue is also about to hit the block. The 22-story building, owned by Laurence Gluck’s Stellar Management and Rockpoint Group, sits on the corner of West 44th Street and according to Jones Lang LaSalle’s Scott Latham, it is likely to draw “tons of interest” and as much as $600 per square foot. [more]

Steven Witkoff, CEO of the Witkoff Group, and Columbus House at 95 West 95th StreetIn a decision that lawyers say could impact 17,000 current and former Mitchell-Lama apartments statewide, an appellate court ruled Dec. 28 that tenants at Columbus House, a former Mitchell-Lama building on the Upper West Side, were protected against rent increases after the building was sold. The Witkoff Group, following the 2006 acquisition of 95 West 95th Street for $68 million, applied for rent increases for 248 individual apartments at Columbus House, but the applications sat at the state Division of Housing and Community Renewal for more than a year. In 2007, the state then moved to close a loophole that would have allowed landlords to convert thousands of Mitchell-Lama buildings to market-rate. [more]

Larry Gluck and the Windermere Hotel

Larry Gluck’s Stellar Management has purchased the 374-unit Windermere Hotel at 666 West End Avenue for $68 million, according to the Post. The 23-story building currently contains both market-rate and stabilized hotel rooms and apartments, but Gluck said yesterday’s closing — with more than $50 million in financing from a group led by Signature Bank — marked the end of transient guests at the property. [more]

Laurence Gluck’s Stellar Management has scooped up Tivoli Towers, the run-down 320-unit rental building in Crown Heights, for $9.5 million, five years after he signed a contract on the property for around $5 million more than that. Based on Gluck’s track record of buying up rent-regulated buildings and converting them to market-rate apartments, city officials had initially opposed the deal, according to the Wall Street Journal. But this time around, Gluck has agreed to keep Tivoli affordable until 2040 and spend $15 million on renovations to the building. The city’s Housing Development Corp. will finance the renovation project, which includes new elevators, roof repairs, security upgrades and kitchen and bathroom improvements, and will also help with the $30 million needed to pay off the building’s debt and other expenses. Gluck said he hopes the deal “creates some bonhomie” with the city after a number of unpopular deals, like Tribeca’s Independence Plaza North, which he removed from the city’s housing voucher program, and Harlem’s Riverton Houses, which ended up in foreclosure earlier this year. Stellar will take in 6 percent in annual management fee returns at Trivoli and expects the deal to be “mildly profitable” over the next 30-years. [WSJ]

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Laurence Gluck, Independence Plaza North

Manhattan landlord Laurence Gluck illegally deregulated rents for tenants at Tribeca’s Independence Plaza North while simultaneously receiving J-51 tax breaks from the city, a state Supreme Court judge ruled yesterday, taking a page out of the book on Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village, where a similar ruling was handed down last year. At the 1,331-unit IPN, at 80 N. Moore Street, Gluck facilitated the complex’s exit from the state’s Mitchell-Lama rent-stabilized housing program in 2004 and subsequently jacked up the rents, according to Crain’s. The tenant-led suit argued that Gluck should not have been allowed to raise rents while still receiving tax breaks from the city. Yesterday’s ruling reverses a March state decision that said the rent increases were justified because Gluck repaid the city for the tax breaks when he discovered that they would be problematic. While Gluck is likely to appeal the decision on the five-year-old lawsuit, it represents the latest in a string of setbacks for the landlord, who lost his massive Riverton Houses complex in Harlem to foreclosure earlier this year after failing to convert its 1,230 rent-regulated apartments to market-rate rentals. [Crain's]

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Laurence Gluck, Independence Plaza North

Manhattan landlord Laurence Gluck illegally deregulated rents for tenants at Tribeca’s Independence Plaza North while simultaneously receiving J-51 tax breaks from the city, a state Supreme Court judge ruled yesterday, taking a page out of the book on Stuyvesant Town and Peter Cooper Village, where a similar ruling was handed down last year. At the 1,331-unit IPN, at 80 N. Moore Street, Gluck facilitated the complex’s exit from the state’s Mitchell-Lama rent-stabilized housing program in 2004 and subsequently jacked up the rents, according to Crain’s. The tenant-led suit argued that Gluck should not have been allowed to raise rents while still receiving tax breaks from the city. Yesterday’s ruling reverses a March state decision that said the rent increases were justified because Gluck repaid the city for the tax breaks when he discovered that they would be problematic. While Gluck is likely to appeal the decision on the five-year-old lawsuit, it represents the latest in a string of setbacks for the landlord, who lost his massive Riverton Houses complex in Harlem to foreclosure earlier this year after failing to convert its 1,230 rent-regulated apartments to market-rate rentals. [Crain's]

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