Steven Goodstein, Battery Park City developer, dead at 81

Builder hailed from one of New York’s dynastic real estate families

Steven Goodstein
Steven Goodstein

Steven Goodstein, who built part of Battery Park City in the 1980s and was part of a dynastic New York real estate family, died Saturday. He was 81.

The developer died at his home in Delray Beach, Florida, a representative for his family firm, the Goodstein Organization, told The Real Deal. The cause of death was pneumonia.

Goodstein’s father Jack Goodstein, a Polish immigrant who settled in the Bronx, founded a company in the 1950s that constructed buildings in Manhattan, Queens and the Bronx.

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Steven, born in Queens in 1940, joined the family company in 1957. The firm developed properties including the commercial and residential condominium Fifth Avenue Tower near Bryant Park at 445 Fifth Avenue, and was a one-time owner of the Peninsula Hotel along with Sol Goodman, William Zeckendorf Jr. and others.

In 1981 the Battery Park City Authority selected a joint venture of Goodstein and Milstein Properties to develop several buildings at the Lower Manhattan megaproject.