Jeffrey Gural, Eric Gural and Brian Steinwurtzel
Jeffrey Gural, Eric Gural and Brian Steinwurtzel
Chairman; Co-CEOs at GFP Real Estate
Last year's rank: 52
Betting on the life science sector looks to be a smart move in the wake of the coronavirus, so count GFP Real Estate ahead of the curve.
In 2018, the Gural family-run company started working on a $240 million biotech center at 45-18 Court Square West in Long Island City, Queens, with King Street Properties. GFP nabbed a $156 million construction loan for the property in December and started construction that month.
“It’s risky to build a speculative life science building; the truth is there are few that have done it in New York,” Brian Steinwurtzel, who serves as the co-CEO of GFP along with his cousin Eric Gural, said. “We decided that it was worth taking the risk.”
But it’s not the only new sector GFP — which started in 2017 after chairman Jeffrey Gural left Newmark Knight Frank — dipped its toes into the past year.
The company is working on turning 301 First Avenue into dormitories for the New School as well as a massive redevelopment of 7 Hanover Square. It also bought 675 Avenue of the Americas for $89 million in May 2019 and started the renovation of the historic Flatiron Building.
“We’ve been sort of branching out in terms of doing some new things,” Eric Gural said. “Things that the family hasn’t done in the past.”
Plans for 7 Hanover Square — which GFP went into contract to buy two years ago — call to rebrand the property into separate entities: 50 Water Street on the lower level and 100 Pearl Street.
The 525,552-square-foot 50 Water Street section was fully leased to NYC Health + Hospitals in January 2019, and GFP already inked deals with Fred Alger Management and the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for 100 Pearl Street. (The 241,339-square-foot SEC lease was signed amid COVID-19 and was the largest office lease in the second quarter of 2020.)
“We went and bought an empty building, and we’re going to mostly lease it up before we’ve owned it for a year,” Eric Gural said. “We’re pretty happy about that.”
For next year, GFP plans to focus on finishing up the projects under construction and taking stock of COVID-19’s impact on its portfolio.
“We’re going to have to figure out what kind of damage was caused by COVID,” Eric Gural said. “We’ll probably spend the next year focusing on fixing that damage.”—N.R.
