Henry and Justin Elghanayan
Henry and Justin Elghanayan
Chief Executive Officer; President at Rockrose
Last year's rank: 78
Rockrose’s productive 2019 included furthering its interests in Long Island City, and taking its first steps into Downtown Brooklyn and Hudson Yards.
For the former, the company continued work on its fourth residential project in LIC’s Court Square, The Cove, at 43-12 Hunter Street, which is scheduled to open in the fourth quarter. Rockrose also purchased an additional development site in Court Square, 193,000 square feet at 32-20 Queens Street, for a residential rental project with 179 affordable units.
Given their presence in the area, Rockrose also spent the year shoring up the local retail.
“This has been happening over the last several years, but the momentum really came together in 2019,” said Justin Elghanayan, president of Rockrose. “We now have Partners Coffee in place, the Chinese restaurant Xi’an Famous Food, the Italian restaurant Levante — the whole neighborhood has been coming to life. That’s been a satisfying accomplishment.”
Rockrose began construction last year on a 51-story, 470,000-square-foot residential building at 555 West 38th Street in Hudson Yards that will house 591 rental units, including 177 affordable units. Construction is due for completion in 2022, and will be part of a larger complex that will include a 1.3 million-square-foot office tower.
The company also purchased a development site at 180 Ashland Place in Downtown Brooklyn, Rockrose’s first foray into that market, and will construct a 50-story, 452,000- square-foot residential rental tower with 563 units, including 169 affordable units.
While the rise of remote work during COVID has left many to lose faith in the office market, Elghanayan believes that life post-COVID will return to something resembling normalcy for office life.
“Post-COVID, there will be some added emphasis on sanitary work conditions and diminishing transmission of germs,” he said. “However, I believe that things will pretty much go back to the way they were before in terms of people’s desire to be in larger urban centers. Pre-COVID, there was a massive gravitational pull of people, businesses and talent into large urban centers. It was a very, very powerful force, based on the fact that urban centers like New York are so awesome to live in. I think that momentum has been paused due to COVID, but as soon as COVID is over, I think it’ll continue. There’s a reason why people want to live in cities. Cities are awesome.”—L.G.
