Gary Barnett Makes Billionaires’ Row Move on Stefan Soloviev

Gary Barnett is back to doing Gary Barnett things on Billionaires’ Row.

The chessmaster of Manhattan development has positioned himself to gain control of a prime site on West 57th Street right next to a big assemblage owned by rival Stefan Soloviev, sources told The Real Deal.

Barnett’s Extell Development recently acquired the $50 million defaulted loan on APF Properties’ block-through plot of land at 24 West 57th Street, giving him a path to foreclose on the site and take control.

On its own, the property is a sizable site that has the potential for more than 140,000 buildable square feet. But it also sits next to a four-piece assemblage at 6-20 West 57th Street that Soloviev’s company has been stitching together since the 1980s at a cost of more than $300 million.

It’s not exactly clear what Barnett has planned. But given his track record of covert dealmaking, it hints at the possibility of a grander strategy.

Soloviev said he had no interest in buying 24 West 57th Street.

“I have enough square footage to do what I want there so I don’t need that building,” the developer said.

Soloviev declined to specify his plans for the assemblage. A spokesperson for Extell declined to comment.

APF, led by Kenneth Ashcendorf and Berndt Perl, defaulted last year on its $50 million loan backed by the office property. In January, lender Wells Fargo filed to foreclose. The bank hired an Eastdil Secured team led by Will Silverman and Gary Phillips to arrange a sale of the loan.

Aschendorf declined to comment.

Barnett’s Monopoly-style maneuvering calls to mind another audacious gambit he pulled off with a determined competitor in the same neighborhood two decades earlier.

When Extell was assembling the site for what would be its Central Park Tower in the early 2000s, Vornado Realty Trust’s Steve Roth bought a property across the street for his company’s 220 Central Park South that would have partially blocked views of the park from Barnett’s supertall.

Barnett responded by acquiring a lease on the parking garage under Vornado’s 220 Central Park South and using it as leverage to get Roth to shift his tower to the side and preserve the Extell building’s views.

The West 57th Street play is just one of Extell’s big moves recently.
The company earlier this month paid $160 million to buy Williams Equities’ office building at 655 Madison Avenue with plans to build a luxury condominium with retail at the site. The building is marked for demolition.