The Worldwide Plaza

The Worldwide Plaza is a collection of office and residential buildings occupying a city block in West Midtown. First constructed in 1989, the complex has gone through a multitude of owners in its 24-year history, inspiring one reporter to write, “[I]ts long list of suitors has made it the Elizabeth Taylor of the New York office building world.”

The office condominium portion of the building, first sold to Blackstone and then subsequently to Sam Zell’s Equity Office REIT, in 1998. Leonard Grunstein helped conceive and negotiate the financeable and tax-advantaged structure that enabled the sale, while retaining the retail condominium portion of the building under a financed net lease structure.

The original building was developed by William Zeckendorf Jr. and designed by David Childs, the architect who would go on to design One World Trade Center in Lower Manhattan. The space had formerly housed the third Madison Square Garden, site of Marilyn Monroe’s infamous birthday serenade to President John Kennedy. After the Garden moved south to its present location, the area fell into disrepair. Zeckendorf, predicting the neighborhood was due for a rebirth, took a gamble and purchased the site. His bet paid off, and the building soon attracted prominent tenants such as white-shoe law firm Cravath Swaine & Moore, and Ogilvy Mather, an international advertising agency.

An economic downturn in the early 1990s took a toll on the building and forced a sell-off to the Blackstone Group in 1996. Throughout the next decade, the complex went through several different owners, including Sam Zell’s Equity Office Properties Trust and Deutsche Bank. The property’s price ultimately reached a high of $1.74 billion in a 2007 sale. The most recent economic recession once again took a toll on the plaza, and in 2009, George Comfort & Sons scooped up the complex for a bargain rate of $600 million. The property has since regained value and is now hotly contested by two major investors, Nicholas Schorsch and Scott Rechler.

The buildings in the complex encircle a public plaza, whose focal point is the “Four Seasons” fountain designed by famed sculptor Sidney Simon. The plaza also contains a café and an Off-Broadway theater space below ground.

Leonard Grunstein Joins Historic CitySpire “Air Acquisition” Project

A 75-story tower in Midtown Manhattan, CitySpire Center is the tallest mixed-use skyscraper in New York City. The project began in the early 1980s when Bruce Eichner, a former lawyer turned real estate developer, bought a dilapidated parking garage on West 56th Street. Although he had been in the industry for little more than a decade, Eichner was intrigued by the possibility of assembling a column of air on which to build a much more profitable structure.

For the next two years, Eichner worked to assemble the air rights above City Center (the building behind his property) and eventually move them to his own lot. The process of moving such parcels of unused vertical space is often referred to as a “transfer of air rights.” Although successful, this legal maneuver was limited by New York law, which restricts the amount of space that can be occupied above each square foot of land. As a result, Eichner had to devise a way to stretch the 400 feet he was legally allowed to build to 815 feet in order to secure his envisioned 72 stories.

He decided to tap into a city bonus program that allows developers to add 20 percent to the size of a building as long as they provide amenities for public use. In this case, Eichner agreed to contribute to City Opera and the City Ballet and spend more than $5 million to renovate City Center.

The building, which when completed in 1987 became the second-tallest reinforced concrete tower in the country, was designed by Helmut Jahn. A German-born architect whose work was heavily influenced by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe and the Berlin Bauhaus, Jahn’s tower soars upward from a narrow base, and its stone and glass exterior echo his own passion for transparency, lightness and order.

In 1986, Leonard Grunstein worked on the acquisition and financing of the office tower condominium portion of the development. In addition, he led the charge to complete the work needed to comply with the city’s complicated zoning laws under the bonus program that enabled the construction of CitySpire.

Leonard Grunstein Helps Negotiate Parkchester Redevelopment

The Bronx’s sprawling Parkchester community, once thought of as a “planning phenomenon” during its development in the late 1930s and 40s, served as an early model for Manhattan’s Stuyvesant Town, Peter Cooper Village and Riverton Houses.

The Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. initially proposed the 171-building “city-within-a-city” during the 1939 New York World’s Fair, which was later completed in 1942 despite building restrictions during World War II. The development, which takes its name from the nearby Park Versailles and Westchester Heights neighborhoods, was the largest “privately built planned community” upon its completion and quickly became a haven for returning veterans and their families.

The Helmsley Organization purchased Parkchester in 1968 and subsequently converted it into separate condominiums during the 70s and 80s. However, the development later fell into a state of neglect and disrepair, desperately in need of millions of dollars worth of rehabilitation.

Lacking the necessary funds for a major revitalization effort, the condominiums turned to the Community Preservation Corp. (CPC) to help finance redevelopment of the complex. This rehabilitation project cost more than $250 million and included large-scale projects such as the installation of more than 65,000 new windows, the electrical re-wiring of all 12,271 units, and the redevelopment of commercial spaces.

Working with the CPC and developers Morton Olshan and Jeremiah O’Connor, Leonard Grunstein negotiated the acquisition and created the unique financing device that enabled redevelopment.

As a result, Parkchester is once again a thriving neighborhood appealing to moderate- and middle income families, drawing residents with its wide, tree-lined walkways, green spaces, and playgrounds. Once largely Eastern European and Irish Catholic, the complex’s affordable prices have attracted middle- and working-class ethnic minorities from the West Indies, Latin America, and East and South Asia.

Marina Turned Dockominium | Grunstein Drafts Plan

Formerly a privately owned marina, the Anchorage Yacht Club in Lindenhurst, Long Island, was converted to a “dockominium” in 1985 – the first of its kind in New York state.

Functioning much like its land-based counterpart, a dockominium (also known as an “aquaminium”) allows owners to buy individual boat slips within a marina. Similar to traditional condominium structures, owners share common areas that are maintained by a condominium association and are overseen by a management company. Individual owners, in turn, pay common charges as well as property taxes individually assessed against their unit.

At the Anchorage, which has 460 deeded boat slips, owners share facilities that include a swimming pool, tennis courts, playgrounds, bathroom and showers, docks, and walkways. There are also separate commercial condominium units including office and commercial spaces, repair and boat storage.

Traditionally in the business of renting or leasing available slips, marinas began converting to alternative forms of ownership in the 1980s and ’90s, especially in high-demand areas such as Florida, North Carolina and California. Ownership of a unit in a dockominium provides a number of advantages, most importantly the ability to sell or rent the space when desired. Additionally, dockominiums allow individuals to apply for mortgages and tax deductions, as they would for ownership of an apartment in a condominium.

The dockominium conversion process is complicated, as marina owners must hold the rights not just to the water but to the land beneath the surface as well, which is often owned by the state. As a result, this condominium was premised on ownership of the land adjacent to the canals where the boat slips are located. In effect, each unit is the sliver of land to which the boat slip was attached. As a partner at Herrick, Feinstein, LLP, Leonard Grunstein was formulated the condominium structure, drafted the Condominium Plan and organized the closing that allowed for the conversion of the marina and the subsequent creation of the Anchorage.