Laurie Grasso
Laurie Grasso
Partner and Co-chair of the Global Real Estate Practice at Hunton Andrews Kurth
“I’m closing a four-hotel deal this minute,” Laurie Grasso said when this reporter called to talk about her securing a spot on the Power 100 list. By the next day, all issues were sorted out and her client, Sonesta International Hotels, announced its investment in four Midtown hotels formerly known as The Benjamin, The Shelburne Hotel & Suites, the Gardens Suites Hotel and the Fifty Hotel & Suites. Grasso declined to cite the financials of the deal, as did Sonesta.
“This was their way to reenter the New York City market,” Grasso said of Sonesta, which previously owned the Plaza Hotel.
That was just one of myriad deals the real estate attorney — whose work is in acquisitions, financing and joint ventures — closed in the past year, bringing the value of the transactions she led for Hunton Andrews Kurth to over $7 billion. That’s more than double what she notched on last year’s Power 100 list when Grasso helmed just shy of $3 billion of transactions for the firm.
Her deals this past year included representing Fairstead and Invesco Real Estate in the acquisition of 1,904 affordable housing units across 48 buildings in the Bronx for $350 million, in what the firms called the largest deal of its kind in New York City in 2021. It also included representing L+M Development Partners and Domain Companies in the closing of a $220 million construction loan with Wells Fargo to develop a $370 million mixed-use multifamily development in Long Island City, Queens.
A lot of Grasso’s work over the last year has been on development deals. “Development is back,” Grasso said, noting that she’s working on a lot of construction loans.
Today she has three development projects underway in the Gowanus section of Brooklyn, which is going through a rezoning. And she has six development deals in South Florida.
For Domain, she is assisting the company on its four ground-up development projects, encompassing more than 1,500 apartments in two projects in Gowanus, one in Long Island City and one in the Mott Haven section of the Bronx.
