Aby Rosen and Michael Fuchs
Aby Rosen and Michael Fuchs
Co-founders and Principals at RFR Holding LLC
Last year's rank: 49
The past 18 months have been quite busy for the investment and development firm that childhood friends Aby Rosen and Michael Fuchs launched three decades ago.
Start with the Chrysler Building. The firm bought the leasehold for the 1.2 million-square-foot, 77-story skyscraper for a relative song in March 2019, paying about $150 million (the Abu Dhabi Investment Council had paid $800 million for a majority stake in 2008).
RFR is planning to revamp the Art Deco landmark, including possibly resurrecting a onetime speakeasy in the building called the Cloud Club, though the firm scrapped plans for a hotel conversion. It’s also trying to negotiate its ground lease with owner Cooper Union.
RFR, which already owns the higher-end office properties the Seagram Building and 190 Bowery, also acquired the five-floor, 71,000-square-foot 875 Washington Street, which features more than 200 feet of enviable retail frontage in the Meatpacking District, and the 24-story, 325,000-square-foot office building at 477 Madison Avenue in Midtown.
At the same time, RFR advanced what the firm has described as a push to do most of its leasing in-house. That included poaching Paul Milunec, a top executive at rival SL Green Realty, to join as senior vice president of leasing at the start of 2020. The company also brought on Kevin West and Rob Weller—formerly of Vornado Realty Trust and Tishman Speyer, respectively—as leasing executives last summer.
The firm also sold 345 Park Avenue South to Deerfield Management in a hush-hush, off market deal. Deerfield is converting the asset to a life science property, and the trade made Rosen an investor in a life science fund, as it included a cash component plus interest — valued at $150 million — in one of Deerfield’s innovation funds.—T.A.
