Gregory Katz, Todd Katz and Scott Wilpon

Greg Katz still remembers Carlos Beltran’s final strikeout against the St. Louis Cardinals that ended the New York Mets’ magical 2006 season, four years after he joined Sterling Equities.

“It was disappointing. It felt like that season was going to be a historical one, that’s for sure,” he said. 

Katz, his brother Todd and his cousin Scott Wilpon grew up with the Mets, which their families’ real estate firm Sterling Equities owned for nearly 20 years before selling the team to Steve Cohen in 2020. 

Both families will always have a relationship with New York’s scrappiest baseball team, and not just because Sterling Equities retained a 5 percent ownership stake. They have sought to redevelop the area surrounding Citi Field for decades, culminating in a groundbreaking on a 2,500-unit mixed-income project at Willets Point, Queens, in December. A month later, Sterling Equities joined Related and the NYCFC to purchase a 19,800-square-foot vacant lot at 34th Avenue that will eventually be home to a 25,000-seat soccer stadium, a school, new parkland and more affordable housing.

Katz and his partners are happy with the result, even if it took close to 40 years to achieve. 

“It would have been hard to predict this path from the beginning, but it’s going to be great to create a whole new neighborhood in Queens,” he said. 

Sterling Equities has a large portfolio well beyond Queens. Most of its properties are in Brooklyn and Manhattan, and it has delved into the self-storage business in Long Island as well as luxury residential properties in Sun Belt states such as Florida and Texas. 

But the firm’s relationship with the Mets is woven into the fabric of the company.

“It’s something we’re exceedingly proud of,” Katz said. “It was something special we were doing for the benefit of the city by putting a team on the field that would win and make the city proud.”