Extell Development Company

The full-service development company that Gary Barnett founded in 1989 has built some of the tallest and most expensive residential condominiums in New York, including One57 and Central Park Tower.

Founder Barnett began in the diamond business before getting into real estate, working with Ziel Feldman and Kevin Maloney on rehabilitating older properties before Feldman and Maloney began their own respective firms.

In the early 2000s, Barnett moved aggressively into development with projects such as the Orion in Hell’s Kitchen and the Ariel on the Upper West Side, and he purchased the unfinished parcels of Riverside South that became the Aldyn, the Ashley, the Avery and One Riverside Park. That last project would become infamous for its “poor door,” a separate entrance for the portion of the building designated as affordable.

During the Great Recession, Extell developed One57, a condominium and Park Hyatt Hotel Christian de Portzamparc designed for land that Extell had been assembling for some 15 years. Even before it was complete, Extell was selling units at One57 for more than $90 million each. “We’re basically at a billion dollars worth of sales, which is good for six months,” Barnett told the New York Observer back in 2012.

The appetite for luxury real estate on the 57th Street corridor only continued, and Extell attempted to cash in with another condo. Central Park Tower, also known as the Nordstrom Tower, became the tallest residential tower in New York and the second tallest in the city overall.

Extell’s Brooklyn Point is the tallest tower in that borough, and the company also developed One Manhattan Square in Manhattan’s Two Bridges area.