During his nearly 50-year long career, Steve Shapiro, President of Citadel Realty Services, has been instrumental in some of New York City’s biggest real estate developments and deals. But if you google his name, all that comes up is his wedding announcement from 1982. Part advisor and part fixer, Shapiro and his firm are sought out by the boldest names in NYC real estate for their skills as well as their discretion. Shapiro has helped fill entire apartment buildings full of vacant units and dealt with single tenants racking up violations, all without drawing unwanted attention to his clients or himself. In an exclusive interview, Shapiro gave The Real Deal a peek behind the curtains, revealing for the first time how he leverages his wealth of experience and his creative mind to quietly solve some of the most challenging problems in New York City real estate history for clients from around the industry.
Learning the Ropes
“I started in the industry in 1974, straight out of college,” Shapiro told us. He began at his father’s property management firm and quickly expanded his role from manager to problem solver during the earliest phases of the Savings & Loans Crisis. “I became President in 1978 and evolved the business from straight property management to becoming the fixer.” Shapiro cut his teeth during an era where he describes the city as “going down the tubes.” The industry was in survival mode, with banks “going up in smoke” and owners leaving the city in droves. So Shapiro became an expert at keeping buildings performing while flying under the radar.
It was during this time that he began to see himself as the city’s real estate fixer. “Did you ever see Pulp Fiction? I’m Harvey Keitel,” he says. When approaching complex real estate problems, “it’s not like you open up the book and go to page 352 and read this, and then you do that to the building. We look at the whole picture, and then we untangle it, and straighten it out.” Like the character of The Wolf in Tarantino’s film, Shapiro combines creative thinking, experience, and competence with the ability to stay out of the limelight. His clients trust him to quickly and quietly help them solve complex problems without creating unfavorable headlines.
No “One Size Fits All” Solutions
Without revealing the parties’ identities, Shapiro gave The Real Deal a few examples of how he works. One story that stuck out revealed how thoroughness and discretion play into his ability to get things done when time is a factor. “The family’s attorney lived in this townhouse on 12th Street,” began Shapiro. “He was the personal financier and confidant to a very wealthy family in Europe.” Shapiro was brought in by the children of the family’s scions: when they inherited the empire, they discovered that the financier had embezzled tens of millions of dollars from their trust before fleeing to Africa. “I get a call from an accountant who tells me, ‘Steve, you’re going to hear from a trust company on the Isle of Jersey. One of their clients is having a problem taking back a townhouse on West 12th Street in the village.’”
According to Shapiro, it’s very common for a third party or representative to approach him on behalf of a stakeholder, often thanks to a referral from one of his previous clients. In this case, the family needed someone on the ground to clean up the townhouse to get it ready to rent or sell. Also, because they were having trouble establishing a paper trail, they needed someone who could do a forensic search of the house for evidence of the financier’s theft. “So I sent my bookkeeper down there to look around the basement, and he calls me and says, ‘Hey Steve, I found a false wall.’” Behind the false wall, in secret filing cabinets, were hidden all of the financier’s records. As if that wasn’t enough, the family learned about a large quantity of valuable artwork that the financier had purchased with stolen money. At that very moment, the artwork was being absconded with at the Port of Newark. “So I get another call from the Isle of Jersey saying, ‘You’ve got to get over to the Port of Newark, with police and with our lawyers, and stop the ship.’ This was like out of Law & Order! Here I am driving down into the port with flashing lights. Needless to say, the captain of that ship was not happy when he had to unload crates of artwork.” And, despite the cinematic nature of the story’s final chapter, Shapiro was able to keep both himself and his client out of the papers, discreetly solving what could have been a front page problem.
Shapiro’s talent for lateral thinking helped him rescue the iconic Beaumont on Riverside Drive. The rental apartment building was in need of repair, half vacant, and unable to make enough money to keep up with operating costs. The owners brought in Shapiro, who took a typically creative line to solving the problem. “I contacted the New York State Film industry,” says Shapiro. “I found Orange is the New Black, they came in, rented it out for 10 months, and shot the first season there.” By turning the failing building into a film set, Shapiro netted the owners enough money to make the necessary repairs. And, once the shoot was complete, they were able to sell The Beaumont at a profit.
“We’re All In This Together”
“I believe that real estate people should not just give money,” says Shapiro. “They should give their time and their effort to help people.” Shapiro’s community-minded approach extends to both his work with Citadel and his private involvement with philanthropic organizations. “I had an estate take over two buildings that bookended a vacant lot,” said Shapiro. “One of the buildings had Montefiore on the first floor. So what we did was we converted that building to a clinic. It’s the only AIDS clinic for children in the world.” After opening the clinic, Shapiro recommended that his client tear down the second building and convert that lot and the vacant lot into paid parking. “So we took a losing proposition, and now the owner of the estate is making a fortune.”
In one of his rare public-facing roles, Shapiro is a Board Member of the Jazz Foundation of America. The Foundation helps secure and maintain housing for aging Jazz musicians who have been chewed up and spit out by the recording industry. Shapiro told us how, “when Katrina hit New Orleans, the Foundation flew musicians into New York, Atlanta, L.A., to get them out of the flood zone, and I found them housing.” Shapiro also works with landlords to keep musicians in their homes, using his unique set of skills to find solutions that benefit all parties. “We take our problem solving and we overlay it with helping people.”
After decades in the business, Shapiro has seen it all, and he takes recent market developments in stride. “I have seen New York go down and up four or five cycles,” he says. “New York is going to come back three times stronger. It always does. There are too many different components that make New York great.” His faith in the city goes beyond simple economics; Shapiro sees New York as the center of the universe, and, more importantly, as a fundamentally collective enterprise created by everyone working together. “People have to understand that this is a collaborative, massive effort between governments, between private landlords, small landlords, big landlords,” he says. “We’re all in this boat together.”
If you’re having a problem without an easy solution, Shapiro’s wisdom and confidential consultations are just an email: sshapiro@citadelre.com or phone call away 917-660-1223