Highgate Hotels founder buys UES townhouse for $22.5M

Interior designer Juan Pablo Molyneux bought it for just $3.1M in 1990

Juan Pablo Molyneux with his wife Pilar and the exterior and interior of the townhouse
Juan Pablo Molyneux with his wife Pilar and the exterior and interior of the townhouse

Juan Pablo Molyneux designs interiors for a living, but he apparently knows something about buy-and-hold investing too.

Molyneux, who once designed a 40,000-square-foot palace for Qatari Sheikh Mohamed Bin Suhaum Al-Thani, sold his Upper East Side townhouse to Highgate Hotels co-founder Mahmood Khimji for $22.5 million, an impressive $19.4 million over the 1990 purchase price.

The seven-story, six-bedroom, 8,700-square-foot limestone house, at 29 East 69th Street, features a library, a gym, an elevator, and five outdoor spaces including a 1,600 Square Foot Roof Terrace with a “therapeutic pool.” It was featured in Harper’s Bazaar last year.

Molyneux originally placed it on the market in 2012, asking $48 million.

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Paula Del Nunzio had the listing.

The buyer, Khimji, founded Highgate Hotels, a hospitality investment firm, in 1988 with his brother Mehdi. As of last fall, it managed 60 hotels and 20,000 rooms.

The company recently sold its stake in the 689-key Manhattan at Times Square Hotel, which it owned along with Rockpoint and Goldman Sachs. The buyer in that deal was Qatari investment firm Al Rayyan Tourism and Investment, a subsidiary of Al Faisal Holdings. [NYP]Ariel Stulberg

 

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