Gary Barnett has finally gotten his way on the Upper East Side.
Barnett’s Extell Development paid $27.9 million to longtime landlords Jay and Stuart Podolsky for a 6,000-square-foot building at 1645 First Avenue, a property in the middle of his long-planned development site. The deal ends a years-long standoff between Barnett and the Podolsky brothers, who refused to let go of the property.
Barnett declined to comment, saying, “It’s just a regular deal, no big deal.”
“We have the whole site complete now,” he said. “I don’t know what I’m doing yet, so we’ve got to figure it out now.”
Extell purchased the four-story, 36-unit building from the brothers’ Amsterdam Hospitality Group, according to property records. The property, which was formerly used as a homeless shelter, sits between East 85th and East 86th streets in Yorkville.
Barnett has been assembling the site since 2014, spending more than $77 million on nine lots, along with nearly $5 million for an easement and air rights. But the Podolskys’ building sat stubbornly in the middle, forcing Extell to come up with an unusual workaround.
In November 2021, the developer filed plans for a 22-story, L-shaped building designed that would essentially build around the holdouts. The plans called for 543 apartments and commercial space.
At the time, Barnett told The Real Deal he had made the Podolskys generous offers, at least five times what their property was worth. But the brothers had shown little interest in selling. Barnett also faced a battle to remove a rent-stabilized tenant who was living in one of the remaining buildings.
The Podolskys are no strangers to controversy. The brothers pleaded guilty in the 1980s to harassing low-income renters and were accused of cheating on taxes for apartments rented to the city. Questions also arose surrounding their 2017 hiring of Bill de Blasio crony Frank Carone to represent them in a $173 million cluster site sales negotiations with the administration.
The Podolskys did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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