Charles Bendit, Paul Pariser, Chris Balestra and Colleen Wenke
Paul Pariser, Charles Bendit, Colleen Wenke and Chris Balestra
Co-Founder and Co-CEO; Co-Founder and Co-CEO; President and Chief Operating Officer; President and Chief Investment Officer at Taconic Partners
Last year's rank: 25
In June, Taconic Partners will celebrate its 25th birthday, and the developer sure has done a lot over the past quarter of a century, which you could tell just from 2021.
“I’m incredibly proud of our team and our resilience in getting through the worst days of COVID,” Colleen Wenke said.
In the past year, Taconic Partners and Nuveen Real Estate completed a $260 million fundraising for a jointly sponsored value-add fund, New York City Property Fund II. The two companies bought a warehouse in New Jersey for $55 million. Located at 1 Cory Road, the deal was Taconic’s first industrial real estate acquisition. Along with Flatiron Equities, Taconic and Nuveen also acquired 309 East 94th Street for $70 million.
“We’re very thoughtful about the projects we take on,” Charles Bendit said. “We try to identify sites that will add value to neighborhoods and improve neighborhoods.”
On the debt side, the firm secured a $130 million loan from Wells Fargo for Eastchester Heights, one of the largest residential apartment complexes in the Bronx. The financing provided funding for ongoing renovations at the property, which has 1,416 rent-stabilized units across five blocks.
Taconic also partnered with National Real Estate Advisors to close a $204 million construction loan at 312 West 43rd Street within the Clinton Preservation District of Manhattan’s Hell’s Kitchen. The financing provides funding for vertical construction of the mixed-use development, which will consist of 330 luxury rental apartments, over 30,000 square feet of amenities, and more than 40,000 square feet of retail.
“We had a really active year getting some of our projects underway,” Chris Balestra said. “We’re still very bullish on the life science market as well as high-quality
Class A office space.”
And Essex Crossing — the 1.9 million-square-foot Lower East Side project Taconic is building with L+M Development Partners, BFC Partners, Goldman Sachs’ Urban Investment Group and The Prusik Group — secured Verizon as its anchor tenant in November.
“There’s a lot of uncertainty around the office in New York right now, primarily relating to post-COVID,” Paul Pariser said. “The war that we’re in is interest rates and inflation kicking up. And there’s a real switch from what I’ll call B to A — from secondary-type office to a typical office.”
