Laurence Gluck
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]