Stuart Saft
Real estate group practice leade at Holland & Knight
Stuart Saft practices law by a simple motto: “Never ever brag about your victories after you’ve accomplished something, because you’ll never get to do it a second time.”
It is that mantra that helped him find success negotiating some of the biggest residential real estate deals in New York City. When he joined Holland & Knight in 2012, the real estate department had just five lawyers. Today the department has 60 lawyers who over the last year have worked on almost $11.5 billion in transactions.
“We did development, we did financing, ground leases, commercial leases, every different kind of financing,” Saft said. “It’s just a fascinating practice. … Some of the things that we’ve done that’s very interesting are in the adaptive reuse area.”
Adaptive reuse projects that Saft and his team have worked on include the office buildings at 730 Fifth Avenue, 685 Fifth Avenue and 212 Fifth Avenue for hospitality and residential use. Saft’s team also represented Naftali Group on Williamsburg Wharf, a 3.75-acre development along the Brooklyn waterfront that features 850 homes across five residential towers.
Perhaps most famously, Saft represented the developer of the flagship Aman Resorts, Hotels and Residences in the Crown Building, a $1.45 billion office-to-hospitality conversion.
“We took the Crown Building on 57th Street and Fifth Avenue, and converted it from an office building to the Aman New York with a jazz club in the basement,” Saft said. “And that was fascinating.”
Saft couldn’t provide many details on what he and his team are currently working on, though he did allude to a “huge” hospitality deal.
As passionate as Saft is about practicing this arm of law, he’s equally enthusiastic about mentoring the next generation of real estate lawyers.
“One of the first things that I teach young associates — we hire a first-year associate every year, and I train them myself, because I think it’s the most important thing that I do — is … to learn not to get bogged down in peripheral issues,” he said. “Identify what your goal is and move to satisfy the goal. Don’t get sidetracked by things that might seem important, but really aren’t.”
