Jake Elghanayan
Senior vice president at TF Cornerstone
Last year's rank: 50
Jake Elghanayan is looking at a busy year ahead, with major projects underway that will only further solidify TF Cornerstone’s dominance in the outer borough multifamily market.
The completion of 2-20 and 2-21 Malt Drive in Long Island City, Queens, last year put TF Cornerstone in the top echelons of the largest New York City owner-operators of residential properties, walking alongside such behemoths of the city as Blackstone and Related Companies.
Elghanayan is pushing some old projects across the finish line while getting a number of new ones off the ground. The new ones include 2-23 Oak Street and 43-57 West Street in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, both of which TF Cornerstone purchased for $175 million in late 2024 and where it plans to build a total of 1,000 residential units. There’s also the planned 85-story supertall known as Project Commodore at 175 Park Avenue in Manhattan, which entered public review earlier this year.
Even as the company faces the same headwinds as others considering the changing nature of Trump administration policy surrounding tariffs, Elghanayan isn’t flinching. Instead he’s taking wisdom from his father’s generation — Tom Elghanayan and uncles Fred and Henry Elghanayan planted the roots of TF Cornerstone in the 1970s in the form of Rockrose — and planning ahead. Way ahead.
“It’s definitely concerning, but we’re certainly more focused on sort of two and five years ahead rather than two months or sixth months ahead,” Elghanayan said. “For the most part, we’re able to weather through these things, and they won’t change our plans dramatically.”
This forethought has led the company through recessions and double-digit interest rate environments, making today’s lending costs a relatively easy experience, according to Elghanayan. He told CO in January that the company had locked in loans at exceedingly low interest rates during the pandemic and won’t be dealing with maturities until about 2028.
Adding to its current momentum of success, Elghanayan said that the company’s office portfolio is experiencing just as much demand as its multifamily, recently reaching 98 percent occupancy.
