Julie Satow, Crain’s New York Business, Jan. 27, 2021
When a small-time developer agreed to pay $1.8 billion for a swath of Donald Trump’s Riverside South development on Manhattan’s Upper West Side in June, real estate insiders were stunned. Since then, Gary Barnett has been showing up everywhere.
“People in the industry have known about Gary for a while, but all of a sudden, he’s doing really high-profile deals, and lots of them,” says Scott Latham, a senior director at brokerage
Backed by some of the deepest pockets in the business and willing to trample on the toes of some of the most powerful folks around, the president of Extell Development Corp. is on a tear. He is constructing a 60-story apartment building on West 42nd Street, as well as sprawling apartment complexes in Miami and Boston.
Mr. Barnett has acquired more than two dozen properties in New York over the past five years, according to city records.
Mr. Barnett, who lives in Queens with his wife and seven children, popped up on the New York real estate scene in 1994. In his first deal, he bought the landmarked Upper West Side Belnord Apartments. Negotiating with the tenants of the largely rent-controlled building, he was able to increase rents in exchange for renovating the 12-story Italian Renaissance structure.
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