Ziel Feldman and the Setai

HFZ, led by Ziel Feldman, and Israel’s Acro Group, have closed on an
$80 million deal with Anglo Irish Bank to buy the note at the Setai
condominium at 40 Broad Street.
Anglo Irish, the struggling Irish lender, put its $147 million
construction loan up for sale in 2010 after the sponsor, Zamir
Equities, defaulted on the debt.
Zamir completed the conversion of the 34-story office building into a
condo and sold around 50 percent of the units, but former Attorney
General Andrew Cuomo allowed buyers to back out of their contracts and
halted future sales. Comments

At left: Gaia managing partners Amir Yerushalmi and Danny Friedman and Park River Properties’ Lenny Sporn and Mickey Roth at their new office opening. At right: Lenny Sporn with Rabbi Yishayahu Yosef Pinto at the office.

It’s been less than three months since Prudential Douglas Elliman powerbrokers Mickey Roth and Lenny Sporn departed the firm to start their own venture, but the Roth-Sporn brand appears to be holding strong, even under their new company name, Park River Properties.

The freshly-minted firm, which organizes foreign buyers into purchase groups for bulk deals in new development condominiums in New York City, is planning a slew of international outposts for its forthcoming expansion. In addition to the existing Park River office in Tel Aviv, Israel, a branch is coming to Rome next month, Sporn said. He is hoping to open a total of five new overseas offices over the course of the year, and is eyeing Japan and India for two of them.

Park River, which launched in December as part of one-year-old Gaia Real Estate, a distressed investment firm, also moved into a permanent U.S. headquarters this week with Gaia and Gaia’s latest acquisition, Vision Property Management, at the Carnegie Hall Tower at 152 West 57th Street. Park River currently employs 15 agents in New York and also has plans to open two more Manhattan branches over the next six months. [more]

Mickey Roth

Prudential Douglas Elliman brokers Meir “Mickey” Roth and Lenny Sporn have left the brokerage giant to start a new firm.

Roth and Sporn, formerly partners in the Roth-Sporn Group, parted ways with Elliman two weeks ago and are in the process of launching Park River Properties, which will focus on organizing international buyers into purchase groups for new development condominium units.

The new company, temporarily headquartered at 117 East 57th Street, is slated to formally launch in January, Roth told The Real Deal by telephone today. The company currently has three employees in addition to Roth and Sporn, including two based in Israel, where they expect to recruit most of their buyers at first, he said.

“This is a unique concept and something we’re very excited about,” Roth said, adding that a couple members of Elliman’s Roth-Sporn group, which previously had four members, have joined the venture. [more]

After testing the waters with a few individual apartments, Prudential Douglas Elliman’s Lenny Sporn and Mickey Roth have listed all of the remaining sponsor units in 370 East 76th Street as a $26 million bulk purchase. The package includes 55 units totaling 48,355 square feet, Roth said. He said both the individual units and the package, which became available last week, have seen interest. Several current tenants of the 366-unit co-op are considering putting their units on the market as part of the package, Roth said, and others are interested in buying additional units in the building, owned by East 76th LLC. [more]