Madison Equities is a real estate development company. The firm, founded in the 1960s by Kenneth and Lucille Gladstone, has built luxury residential buildings, offices, hotels and mixed-use properties in Manhattan. Among its most prized developments are the Excelsior luxury apartment building on 57th Street (known for being the first truly mixed-use building in New York City) and the Galleria, which was known as one of the country's largest residential buildings when it was erected in 1975. Madison also built the W Times Square Hotel, which included the worlds tallest signage tower. But it also has focused on boutique hotels, especially in recent years, planning the 35-story Hotel Belmont in Midtown. In 2014, the firm sued a Serbian church it had bought air rights from, claiming it failed to disclosed a $13.5 million brokerage fee before finalizing the deal. Madison boasts that it never takes on more than 75 percent debt for any project, preferring to net as much equity in each building as possible.