Charles Bendit and Paul Pariser
Charles Bendit and Paul Pariser
Co-CEOs at Taconic Partners
Last year's rank: 53
Some firms are using the pandemic as an opportunity to scour New York and other expensive cities for development deals. Taconic, which is in the market for potential life science projects, is one of those companies.
The investment firm has already redeveloped 619 West 54th Street into lab and medical office space with Silverstein Properties on the Far West Side. Now it’s about to buy two yet-to-be-announced properties that will also become life science space elsewhere in New York City. By the end of the year, Charles Bendit said that the firm will have $2 billion worth of life science investments in the five boroughs.
The below-the-radar powerhouse also owns 2,000 apartments in the northern Bronx, where 99 percent of the units are occupied and more than 95 percent of tenants have paid rent throughout the coronavirus outbreak. However, rents and occupancy have declined somewhat at Taconic’s luxury rental properties in Manhattan, which include the 190-unit Caledonia in Chelsea and the 392-unit 525 West 52nd Street in Hell’s Kitchen.
“Rents in the Bronx have remained strong, but in Manhattan, concessions are up and net effective rents are down,” said Bendit.
Taconic is also deep into construction on the multi-building Essex Crossing megaproject on the Lower East Side, which it is co-developing with BFC Partners and L+M Development Partners. It was able to continue work on two residential buildings through the construction shutdown in March and April: the Artisan, a 257-unit rental building with 175,000 square feet of office space, and One Essex, an 83-unit residential condominium with 178,000 square feet of office. They have begun marketing the office space in the complex, which has asking rents in the high $80s per square foot.
In Coney Island, the firm is developing an affordable 446-unit, two-tower rental project with BFC and L+M, which will have 66,000 square feet of new office space for the city’s Human Resources Administration.
And now, Bendit and Pariser will be able to move forward with their planned project in Inwood, where an appellate court just upheld a neighborhood rezoning that was challenged by activists. The pair own a large development site by the 1 train station in the upper Manhattan neighborhood, where they hope to build 700 apartments.—R.B.R.
